Faith in God is not unlike most other things. It exist out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view.

But one crucial distinction that can be made here is the extent to which, out in this particular world, your faith in God is tested.

And faith here can be tested either in relationship to personal experiences or tested in a general context in which the world [or much of it] is going through a crisis.

And few global calamities quite match the impact of World War II. There you are out in this particular world groping about in a particular context struggling to reconcile your faith in God with all that you have known, all that you have seen, all that you have experienced that can only be described as a "test of faith".

Imagine, for example, a convent in Poland in which several of the "holy sisters" are in the advanced stages of pregnancy.

How does the war figure into it?

How does God figure into it?

You won't believe the fate of the babies here. But there are still a few of us around who were not at all shocked. Anything and everything can be rationalized. Either with or without God.

Still, we see clearly why God and religion are embraced even in the face of such terrible circumstances. After all, if God is not there to stuff everything into, then you have to accept the reality that these terrible things "just happened". And that those who perpetrated them will never be confronted [in the end] with Divine Justice.

And what is a convent but a world built by and for objectivists. And what was the Second World War but a conflagration set into motion by yet more objectivists still. And now the objectivists who call themselves Communists are on the scene.

And, then, when they collide....

So, in part, this is a film about men and women, brutally ensconced in these conflicted worlds -- right makes might! might makes right!-- coming up with a way in which to communicate. And then coming to grips with the consequences when they fail.

The film is said to be "based on actual events".

IMDb

Anne Fontaine originally met with Agata Kulesza in Poland because she was an admirer of her work, but told her that she didn't wish to cast her as the Mother Superior since she thought her too sexy for the role. The actress laughed and asked the director if she could put on a veil and read an extract for a Polish work. Once she did, Fontaine decided to give her the part.

Mother Superior: Who is this?Sister: A doctor. I was worried.Mother Superior: Go to your cell.

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Mathilde [of a very pregnant young woman]: Has she been like this long?Sister Maria: Since yesterday.Mother Superior: Her family threw her out. We've secretly taken her in out of charity.

We suspect that is not the case at all.

Mathilde: Tomorrow I will return to check for complications.[Sister Maria says nothing]Mathilde: Why not? It's a simple request.Sister Maria: Simple for you, but not for us. Mathilde: If the mother and baby die, you will be responsible too. Can I come back tomorrow or not?Sister Maria: Come back at Lauds. The dawn prayer. While they pray, I'll let you in.

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Mother Superior: We were persecuted by the Germans, then the Russians arrived. For us, when they burst into our convent, it was an indescribable nightmare. Only God's help will allow us to overcome it.

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Mathilde: How many are in that condition?Sister Maria: Seven. No, six now that Sister Zofia...Mathilde: God's help won't be enough.Mother Superior: We are in the hands of Providence.Mathilde: You need someone qualified. I can send a Polish Red Cross midwife.Sister Maria: If you do that, our convent will be shut down. Mother Superior: If we're evicted, our girls will be objects of shame. People will find out. Everyone will reject them. Many will die. My duty is to protect our secret.Mathilde: They'll give birth in..Sister Maria: We'll help.Mathilde: You already said that. They'll go to Heaven. Good for them. But I care about life. Mother Superior: No one will enter this convent. Mathidle: All right. I'll report this to my superiors.

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Mathilde: In your opinion, how will the new regime treat the Polish Church?Samuel [a doctor]: Why the hell should you care? The Polish Church interests you?Mathilde: I'm just asking.Samuel: I hope they'll piss it off. And not just the Church, the people too.Mathilde: That's not very kind. What have the Poles done to you?Samuel: I can't stand them. They got what they deserved with the Russians and the Germans.Mathilde: You're very bitter.Samuel: Maybe I have my reasons.

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Sister: I can no longer reconcile my faith with these terrible events. God, of whom I still consider myself to be the divine bride, nonetheless wanted this.Mother Superior: Wanted it?Sister: If it happened that means He wanted it.Mother Superior: We cannot know what God wants. The only truth is His love. Sister: And this life that has been forced into me, that will soon come forth, what does He want me to do with it?Mother Superior: Let us kneel, Sister. Let us pray? It's our only consollation.

This [to me] is religion in a nutshell. It's God or...nothing.

Sister [one of the pregnant victims]: No...Mathilde: She mustn't be afraid, I'll just check the baby's position.Sister Maria: Don't be afraid, It's to see if the baby is all right. Sister [anguished]: I don't want to go to Hell!Sister Maria [to a perplexed Mathilde]: She fears damnation...It may seem incomprehensible to the outside world. Despite what has happened, we must still respect our vow of chastity.

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Mathilde: I'm here to help. Tell me how.Sister Maria: It's not easy. We're not allowed to show our bodies. And even less be touched. It's a sin. Mathilde: I took risks to come here. Can't we set God aside while I examine them?Sister Maria: You don't set God aside.Mathilde: So what use am I?Sister Maria: I'll talk to them.

Sister Maria [weeping]: Forgive me. However much I pray, I cannot find any consolation. Every day I relive what happened. Every day. I still smell the stench of them. They came back three times. They should have killed us.

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Sister Maria: I had already known a man in my other life. Most of the Sisters were virgins.Mathilde: But none have lost their faith?Sister Maria: You know, faith....At first, you're like a child, holding your father's hand, feeling safe.[long pause]Sister Maria: Then a time comes -- and I think it always comes -- when your father lets go. You're lost, alone in the dark. You cry out, but no one answers. Even if you prepare for it you're caught unawares. It hits you right in the heart....That's the cross we bear. Behind all joy lies the cross.

And that explains what exactly? For some, of course, everything.

Samuel: Work-wise, you're an excellent assistant. I don't want to lose you. Even if you are a Communist.Mathilde: Not a party member.Samuel: Maybe, but you believe in a brighter tomorrow.Mathilde: We have to believe.Samuel: Really?

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Mathilde [after examining the Mother Superior]: There are lesions. I'll do a test to be sure.Mother Superior: A test?Mathilde: It's advanced syphilis. I can get medicine to treat it. Mother Superior: I don't need you to treat it.

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Sister Maria: I arrived here in that dress. I was stylish. I liked men and men liked me.Mathilde: Don't you ever regret it?Sister Maria: Faith is twenty-four hours of doubt and one minute of hope. At first, I found the discipline hard to take. Chastity too. I know happiness is not the goal we pursue but without the war and without the horror that struck us...I could say I'm happy.

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Sister Maria: What are you lacking?Mathilde: Do you want to convert me?Sister Maria: It's an honest question.Mathilde [after a long pause]: No one can really answer that.Sister Maria: No one in the outside world.

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Mathilde [to the Mother Superior]: This is Dr. Samuel Lehmann.Samuel: Yes, I'm Jewish. There are a few of us left. Now that's settled where are the patients.Mathilde: He'll keep your secret.Mother Superior: How many doctors did you bring?Sister Maria: I wasn't expecting him.Mother Superior: Don't you realize the danger?Samuel: We can talk for hours. Women are suffering and in danger. I'm not baptized, I won't go to Heaven, but I'm a doctor. I don't need this. If we are not welcome say so and we'll leave.

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Samuel [to Mathilde]: If someone had told me I'd end up delivering the babies of Polish nuns knocked up by Soviet grunts....

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Mother Superior: I was right to be wary of the French woman. She has brought scandal and disorder.Sister Maria: Forgive me, but scandal and disorder were already here.Mother Superior: Enough!

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Mother Superior [praying]: I beseech You to open the gates of Your Kingdom to me, to give me the courage to follow the path I have chosen....to help me bear this heavy cross....Help me.

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Sister Maria: Sister Sofia made these for the baby.Sofia's mother: What baby? All of my children are grown.Sister Maria: But the baby...[then she realizes...]Sister Maria: Forgive me. May God protect you.

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Sister Maria: Mother, I beseech you, tell me the truth. What did you do with the child?!Mother Superior: What I had to.Sister Maria: Meaning what?Mother Superior: I entrusted him to God.Sister Maria: I don't understand.Mother Superior: You don't? Don't you believe in Providence?Sister Maria: I do.Mother Superior: I believe it embraced those children.Sister Maria: What did you do?!Mother Superior: What I could!.....I want to be alone! Get out!

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Elderly Sister: But our Mother has found families for all the babies.[she looks down at her]Sister: Haven't you?Sister Maria: Mother, speak, please.Mother Superior: I wanted to spare all of you shame and dishonor. I damned myself to save you.

You can watch the film to see what she actually does with the babies.

Sister Maria [in a letter to Mathilde]: "The dark clouds have moved on. The sun shines brightly in our sky. And you are in our hearts. Perhaps other wars will come. Other dangers threaten us. It will soon be harder to write to each other. But whatever fate awaits us, I feel ready to face it. I know, even if it makes you laugh, that God sent you. May He accompany you in your trials and may you always be joyful. Yours, Maria."

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Health care. Both sides of the political spectrum are able to line up their own collection of horror stories. On the left are those able to note time and again those grim, even gruesome instances in which a pursuit of the bottom line destroyed lives. And those on the right then trot out what they insist are equally grim, even gruesome instances in which government ineptitude and bureaucracy destroyed lives.

Both sides will then invariably insist that only if the other side is made to go away can health care ever be as it should be. In other words, one or another rendition of capitalism and/or one or another rendition of socialism. "And/or" because in most countries it is always a complex and ever shifting intertwining of both political economies.

It's just that, for those capitalists who happen to be selling medical care [or insurance], the bottom line is the bottom line. And, come on, who is kidding whom regarding the practical implications of this? Also, as though even within the "private sector" there can't be both bureaucracy and incompetence. And that's before we get to the god-awful corruption that is built right into crony-capitalism.

Here the drama all unfolds in Mexico. And down there: According to director Rodrigo Pla, the character of Sonia isn't an accurate statistical representation of Mexicans, because only about 5% to 10% have medical insurance in Mexico.

So, here, Sonia is the anomaly. She has private insurance. But when her husband becomes gravely ill the insurance company denies her application for coverage.

The film then switches back and forth between the courtroom where Sonia is on trial [encompassed in voiceover exchanges] and the sequence of events that led up to it.

IMDb

In an interview with Variety Magazine, director Rodrigo Pla explained that the reason for some scenes, which at first seem neutrally observed but are then revealed to be witness testimonies in a future court case brought against Sonia due to her actions, was because that's the same narrative that the source novel uses and that this helped balance the story. He said if the story had only been revealed from Sonia's POV, the audience would feel immediate empathy with her, so the multiplicity of POVs helps to fairly balance out the story.

Jana Raluy, who plays Sonia Bonet, stated that her father had died of cancer shortly before filming began and this helped her emotionally with developing her character.

A MONSTER WITH A THOUSAND HEADS [Un Monstruo de Mil Cabezas] 2015 Directed by Rodrigo Plá

Receptionist: The doctor isn't in.Sonia: He has to be. My husband got much worse last night.Receptionist: He was, but he had to leave. Sonia: Is this a joke? I've been waitng for hours!!Receptionist: You didn't tell me who you were waiting for.Sonia: I told the other girl! How dare you!![the receptionist says nothing]Sonia: Can I see the manager?Receptionist: You can fill out a complain form. Everyone's gone anyway. It's Friday.

Nothing new here, right? North of south of the border.

Receptionist: They told her that you are here.Doctor [who is standing right there]: But I'm not.

Sonia: Excuse me, I know this is your home and it isn't right...Doctor: It's not right and it's a bad time. I was on my way out. Let's do this on Monday morning. In my office.Sonia: No, we can't wait any longer.

Her husband after all is dying.

Sonia: My husband is a good person. Look at his photo.Doctor: I don't doubt it, it's not that. I already checked the papers.That drug isn't on the list of approved medications. Sonia: There are studies...Doctor: Leave or I'll call the police. Sonia: Why are you denying him treatment? What do you have against us?Dario: Mom, calm down. Sonia: No, I need to understand. There must be a mistake.[she turns to the doctor]Sonia: If it was your wife, you'd give her anything. We've paid this policy for 16 years.[he reaches for his phone to call the cops]Sonia [pulling out a gun]: No! No!

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Doctor: Please put down the gun. I don't even know you. It's company policy. Not all applications are approved. That's how insurance companies work. And your apllication has errors. It can be fixed.Doctor's wife: No, it can't. It's not a mistake. Coordinators have to reject certain apllications. That's how it works.

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Sandoval: How do you know that the doctor is telling the truth? There are lots of scams.Sonia: This isn't a scam.Sandoval: Some doctors will operate on a dead man for money. Sonia: It's not an operation, it's a drug treatment.

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Sandoval [looking at a computer screen]: This is an agreement for the payment of financial incentives to the coordinators with the highest number of rejections of coverage. This one too. These are the monthly rejection rates for pre-existing conditions...Here is a recommendation from the Health Ministry ignored by ther company.

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Jorge: "They will remain in the possession of Mrs. Bonet, who agree to destroy them upon approval of said pharmaceutical found on the company's list of approved medications." This is blackmail.Sandoval: Just write it, as CEO I'll take responsibility.

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Dario [after answering the phone]: They say that Dad has died. They say that you ahould give up.

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Lorena: I had nothing to do with this. I don't make decisions. I'm just a shareholder. I'm sorry about your husband, If I can help...[Sonia slaps her hard across the face]Sonia: I don't want your pity. You don't even know me. How dare you! It's your fucking company's fault!!

The cops shoot her.

Sonia [to her son, Dario]: Next time, we'll rob a bank, okay?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Indignation: anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment.

And it comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it? And one of the most common is the indignation that one feels when judged solely by the prejudices swirling about inside small minds that ever and always view the world around us in a sludge of stereotypes. Received ideas that are almost always dumped into their heads by others.

For example: The Jew.

Or The Atheist.

And here the Jew [who is also an atheist] has received a scholarship to attend a college out in the Midwest. And it is 1951.

And then there's the part about "coming of age". The part where the world that many "young people" have constructed "in their head" never seems to be in sync with the way the world actually is. Also, as one reviewer noted..."[i]t's about what happens when a young person realizes that the world doesn't necessarily always work the way he wants it to and being unable to cope with that reality."

Basically we come to understand that [here] indignation is a two way street. There's the indignation that others bring to us and the indignation that we bring to others.

The film is said to be a "fictionalized" account of Philip Roth's own 1950s college experience. So, if nothing else, it is going to provoke some serious thinking about what is unfolding on the screen.

INDIGNATION [2016]Written and directed by James Schamus [based on a novel of the same name by Philip Roth]

Marcus [voiceover]: It is important to understand about dying that even though in general you do not have a personal choice in the matter, it is going to happen to you when it happens to you. There are reasons you die. There are causes, a chain of events linked by causality, and those events include decisions that you have personally made. How did you end up here, on this exact day, at this exact time, with this specific event happening to you?

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Ron: Bert. Close the door at least.Bert [ to Marcus]: Ronald doesn't like Negro Communists. Paul Robeson in particular. He doesn't like music at all, in fact.Ron: If Dean Caudwell ever heard you playing that commie propaganda, he'd probably toss you right out of here.

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Marcus: Uh... chapel?Ron: Didn't you read the handbook? Required. Every Wednesday at 11. You have to go to at least 10 of them a year if you want to graduate.

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Sonny: You know that out of 1,400 people on campus, less than 80 are Jewish? That's a pretty small percentage.Marty: The only other fraternity that'll have a Jew is the non-sectarian house, and they don't have much going for them in the way of facilities or really anything.

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Professor: The Puritans faced a particular challenge as, by the 1660s, the first generation began to die out. So in 1662 the Reverend Solomon Stoddard devised the so-called Half-Way Covenant, whereby members of the community could be half-members of the church if they agreed to abide by its rules, even if in their hearts they could not profess a complete Puritanconversion.Student: So, "go along to get along."Professor: That's right. By allowing people to stay part of the church, and by extension, the community, the Puritan leaders were able to maintain authority and political continuity.Marcus: Isn't that the same kind of hypocrisy the Puritans claimed to rebel against? Aren't they doing the exact same thing they accused the Church of England of?Professor: Well, Mr. Messner, hypocrisy is a very strong word.Marcus: It is a strong word, but as ironic as it appears, I believe it is a word that accurately describes the political position of the Puritans of the second generation.Professor: Pragmatism might be an even more accurate term.

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Marcus [voiceover]: What is it that pivots or turns a person from existence to non-existence? For myself, perhaps it was the unceasing movement of Olivia Hutton's leg.

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Marcus [voiceover while Oliva fellates him]: What happened next I puzzeled over for weeks afterwards. Trying to reconstruct the morals that reigned over Winesburg College. And I wonder how my own sorry efforts to overcome those morals may have fostered so much misunderstanding, even grief. Even now I continie to puzzle over Olivia's actions....I told myself "it's because her parents are divorced." I could think of no other explanation for a mystery so profound. Because in Newark it was inconceivabnle that girls like Olivia Hutton could do such a thing...but then again there were no girls like Olivia Hutton in Newark.

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Marcus [to his roommate]: She blew me. I didn't even ask her for it. She just did it.

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Marcus [in a letter]]: "Olivia, You think I've spurned you because of what happened in the car the other night. As I explained, it's because nothing approaching that has ever happened to me before. Just as no girl has ever said to me anything resembling what you said to me in the library tonight. You are different from anyone I've known, and the last thing you could ever be called is a slut. You're mature. You're beautiful. You are vastly more experienced than I am. That's what threw me. Forgive me."

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Olivia [in a letter]: "Dear Marcus, I can't see you. You'll only run away from me again...this time when you see the scar across the width of my wrist. Had you seen it the night of our date, I would have honestly explained it to you. I was prepared to do that. I didn't try to cover it up but as it happend you failed to notice it. It's a scar from a razor. I tried to kill myself. That's why I went for three months to the clinic. It it was the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Sanitarium and Psychopathic Hospital. There's the full name for you. I used the razor when I was drunk. If I had been sober I would have succeeded. So three cheers for ten rye and gingers...they're why I'm alive today. That, and my incapacity to carry anything out. Even suicide is beyond me. I don't regret doing what we did, but we mustn't do anything more. Forget about me, Marcus. There's no one around here like you. You are not a simple soul and have no business being here. If you survive the squareness of this place, you'll have a sterling future. Why did you come to Winesburg to begin with? I came because it's so square. That's supposed to make me a normal girl. But you? You should be studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and living in a garret in Montparnasse. We both should. Farewell, beauticious man. Olivia."

...

Olivia: You weren't in Chapel yesterday.Marcus: I just needed a break. I don't know how much more of Dr. Donehower going on about "Christ's example" I can take.Olivia: Maybe you could get some kind of waiver for conscientious objection.Marcus: Why is that? Because I'm Jewish? I don't object because I'm Jewish, I object I'm an atheist.Olivia: I know.

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Dean: I'd be curious to know why you didn't write down 'kosher, ' Marcus.Marcus: Sir, if you are asking me if I was trying to hide the religion into which I was born, the answer is no.Dean: Well, I certainly hope that's so. I'm glad to hear that. Everyone has a right to openly practice his own faith, and that holds true at Winesburg just as it does everywhere else in this country. On the other hand, under 'religious preference' I see you didn't write 'Jewish, ' though you are of Jewish extraction and, in accordance with the college's attempt to assist students in residing with others of the same faith, you were assigned Jewish roommates. Marcus: I didn't write anything under religious preference, sir.Dean: I can see that. I'm wondering why that is.Marcus: It's because I have none. I don't prefer to practice one religion over another.Dean: What then provides you with spiritual sustenance? To whom do you pray when you need solace?Marcus: I don't need solace, sir. I don't believe in God and I don't believe in prayer. I am sustained by what is real. Praying, to me, is preposterous.Dean: Is it now? And yet so many millions do it.Marcus: Millions once thought the earth was flat, sir.Dean: Yes, that's true. But may I ask you, Marcus, merely out of curiosity, how do you get by in life... filled as life is inevitably with trials and tribulations lacking spiritual guidance?Marcus: I get straight A's, sir.Dean: I didn't ask about your grades. I know your grades. You have every right to be proud of them, as I've already told you.Marcus: Well, then you know the answer to your question of how I get by just fine.

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Marcus: Sir! I object to being interrogated like this! I do not see the purpose of it. These are my own private affairs, as is my religious life and my social life and how I conduct it. I have broken no laws, I'vecaused no one injury or harm, and in no way have my actions impinged on anyone's rights. If anyone's rights have been impinged on they are mine. Dean: Sit down please, and explain yourself.Marcus: I also object to having to attend chapel forty times before I graduate in order to earn a degree. I do not see where the college has the right to force me to listen to a clergyman of whatever faith, even once, or listen to a Christian hymn invoking the Christian deity, given that I am an atheist who is, to be truthful, deeply offended by the practices of organized religion. I am altogether capable of leading a moral existence without crediting beliefs that are impossible to substantiate and beyond credulity. I take it you are familiar, Dean Caudwell, with the writingsof Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell, the distinguished mathematician and philosopher, was last year's recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The work of literature in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize is his widely read essay entitled "Why I Am Not a Christian." Are you familiar with this essay, sir?Dean: Marcus, please sit down...Marcus: Sir, I was asking if you are familiar with this very important essay by Bertrand Russell. I take it that the answer is no. Well, I am very familiar with this essay because I set myself the task of memorizing large sections of it when I was captain of my high school debating team. Now, if you were to read this essay, and in the interest of open-mindedness I would urge you to do so, you would see that Bertrand Russell, undoes with logic that is beyond dispute the first-cause argument, the natural-law argument, the argument from design, the moral arguments for a deity, and the argument for the remedying of injustice. Having studied these arguments, I intend to live my life in accordance with them, as I am sure you would have to admit, sir, I have every right to do.

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Dean: I admire your directness, your diction, your sentence structure, even if I don't necessarily choose to admire whom or what you choose to read and the gullibility with which you take at face value rationalist blasphemies spouted by an immoralist of the ilk of Bertrand Russell, four times married, a blatant adulterer, an advocate of free love, a self-confessed socialist dismissed from his university position and imprisoned during the First War by the British for what in plain English I would call treason....To find that Bertrand Russell is a hero of yours comes as no great surprise. There are always one or two intellectually precocious students on every campus, self-appointed members of an elite intelligentsia who need to elevate themselves and feel superior to their fellow students, superior even to their professors. Nonetheless, that is not what we are here to discuss. What worries me rather is your isolation. What worries me is your outspoken rejection of long-standing Winesburg tradition, as witness your response to Chapel attendance, A simple undergraduate requirement which amounts to, on average, little more than a few minutes per week of your years here.

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Marcus: I cannot bear being lectured like this. I am not a malcontent. I am not a rebel. I have the right to socialize or not socialize with whomever I see fit. Furthermore, your argument against Bertrand Russell is not an argument against his ideas based on reasonbut an argument against his character, i.e., an ad hominem attack, which is logically worthless. Sir, I respectfully ask your permission to stand up and leave now because I am afraid if I don't I am going to be sick.Dean: Of course you may leave. I just ask that you reflect on why leaving appears to be the only way you are dealing with your problems here.

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Marcus: I don't understand how you can be so...Olivia: So what?Marcus: Under control. So expert.Olivia: Oh, yes, Olivia the expert. That's what they called me at the Menninger Clinic.Marcus: But you are.Olivia: You really think so, do you? I, who have eight thousand moods a minute, whose every emotion is a tornado, who can be thrown by a word, by a syllable, am 'under control'? You are blind.

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Marcus: It sounds like you have a very democratic household. That's very American.Olivia: Yes we are - American. Though as a student of American civilization, Marcus, you must remember how Benjamin Franklin once defined democracy? Democracy, he said, is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

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Mother: I never asked anything of you before. I never asked because I never had to. Because you are perfect where sons are concerned. All you've ever wanted to be is a boy who does well. You have been the best son a mother could have. But I am going to ask you to have nothing more to do with Miss Hutton. Because for you to be with her is unimaginable for me.Marcus: Ma... Mother: Markie, you are here to be a student and to study the Supreme Court and to prepare to go to law school. You are here so someday you will become a person in the community that other people look up to and that they come to for help. You are here so you don't have to be a Messner and work in a butcher shop for the rest of your life. You are not here to look for trouble with a girl who has taken a razor and slit her wrists.Marcus: Wrist. She slit one wrist.Mother: One is enough. We have only two, and one is too much.

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Marcus: Dean Caudwell, this is very hard for me to talk about. But I do think that whatever happened in the privacy of my hospital room was strictly between Olivia and myself.Dean: Perhaps and perhaps not. Especially in light of the circumstances.Marcus: Why?Dean: Olivia Hutton had a nervous breakdown, Marcus. She had to be taken away in an ambulance.Marcus: I really don't know what goes into a nervous breakdown.Dean: You lose control over yourself and your emotions, like an infant. You have to be hospitalized and cared for like an infant until you recover, if you ever do recover.

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Marcus: She is where?Dean: At a hospital specializing in psychiatric care.Marcus: She can't possibly be pregnant, too.Dean: Time will tell.Marcus: It's not me.Dean: What was reported to us about your conduct at the hospitalsuggests it could be, Marcus.Marcus: I don't care what it suggests. Dean Caudwell, I will not be condemned on the basis of no evidence. Sir, I resent once again your portrayal of me. I did not have sexual intercourse with Olivia Hutton. have never had sexual intercourse with anyone. Nobody in this world could possibly be pregnant because of me. It is impossible!Dean: Marcus, it is possible...Marcus: Oh, fuck you it is!

...

Marcus [voiceover]: I wonder if everyone, after they die, remembers all the little details and decisions they made, all the reasons they ended up ending the exact way they did. That's how I am...I remember, and replay those things, even if I can't remember how long I've been remembering...maybe it's been forever. And I speak to everyone...Ma, Pa, Olivia, everyone, even if they've been dead already a million years, but I keep speaking to them. Forever...

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Marcus [voiceover after he has been kicked out of school, lost his draft deferment and has just been pierced by a bayonet as a soldier in Korea]: Can you hear me, Olivia? Can you hear me when I tell you that it's okay, whatever it is, that it's okay? Because someone did love you. At least I think that's what it was. And you should know that. You should know, Olivia. You should know.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Special powers. We all want them. And, depending on how you define the term, some of us really do possess them.

On the other hand, up on the screen, the special powers are likely to be considerable more special. And then it becomes a matter of differentiating comic book characters and horror flick monsters from the characters that are more the stuff of science fiction.

And [usually] the science fiction special powers are just some how more believable.

Bottom line: He's not like us.

Still, when you have special powers, there are always going to be others out to take advantage of them. Or to out and out usurp them for their own more or less ulterior and/or nefarious motives. Maybe it's a religious cult. Maybe it's the government. Maybe it's both.

The cult here worships the boy as the Messiah and the government [of course] is interested in how he can be used in the pursuit of "national security"? Or the extent to which he jeopardizes it. It's like being chased by both Warren Jeffs and the NSA.

This is basically one of those films that some will hate because, among other things, "it takes itself too seriously". It's also one of those films in which you sink down into all of these very, very strange events, and it all comes down to this: What Does It All Mean?

Calvin [to Doak]: You have four days, to get the boy back here. He won't give him back easily. But we must get him back in time, you understand? The Lord has placed a heavy burden on you.

...

Calvin: Gulf eclipse and the numbers came... Congregation: 35 47 97 52... Calvin: ...buildings tower, the light comes, to know the source of such things is to know our place in the world.

...

Miller [FBI agent]: We had you under surveillance since members of your ranch acquired a sizable number of firearms over the course of the last six months. Do you have an explanation for this?Calvin: Well, its not illegal to own weapons in this country yet.

...

Paul [NSA agent showing Calvin a notebook]: Do these mean anything to you? Ignore the rest of this. Polo step? Meridian Alpha? Red Saber? The number combination 53, 23, 77, 1, 27?Calvin: Yes. They are excerpts from my sermons. That particular one is from a reading January 18, 2010.Paul: Yes, it is. Did you write this?Calvin: Yes.Paul: What if I told you that words and numbers contained in your sermons include sensitive government information that, given the dates you provide, were transmitted solely by satellite through a heavily encrypted format, the decryption and dissemination of which, other than being scientifically impossible, would surely carry punishments of treason that are so severe the government probably hasn't invented them yet?Calvin: They came from the boy. It's all from the boy.

...

Paul: So can you tell us how an eight-year-old got this information?Calvin: He would have fits.Paul: Can you explain that?Caslvin: And speak in tongues. Sometimes other languages, sometimes unknown languages. We wrote them down. They became our scripture. These are words of the Lord.Paul: Or the Federal Government.Miller: We need to know where he is.Calvin [chuckling]: You all have no clue of what youre dealing with, do you?

...

Lucas [to Roy]: I'm in this for Alton. All the way. Things with that trooper didn't need to go down like that. Dont interfere with me again.

...

Roy: Do you miss it? Living on the ranch.Elden: Yeah. Very much.

...

Alton: What's Kryptonite?Lucas: It's the only thing that'll kill Superman.Roy: It's made up. I should never let you given him those. Hes never seen a comic book in his life.Lucas: That's why he needed em. Reading is reading.Roy: He needs to know what's real.

...

Sarah: Should we do something?Roy: Just stick to the plan and get him there by Friday.Lucas: Do you think that's wise?Roy: It's all we have. This date and place is everything. We take him to a hospital, it's over.Lucas: If it's between that or him dying?Roy: It's three days. He'll make it.

...

Miller [to Paul]: Alton Meyer brought down an Air Force satellite last night. It was tasked with detecting a nuclear explosion....The satellites whole purpose is detecting a nuclear event.

...

Miller: Could a drone be programmed to search for that specific heat signature?Paul: Yeah.

...

Paul: He's not going to Atlanta.Agent: What?Paul: All these places mentioned with sermons, they don't matter.Agent: They don't?Paul: No, he's just listening to the government talk. He's just looking for a language to describe a location and all he heard was coordinates.

...

Sarah: Roy will get him here. Lucas: If he's not dead....Sorry. Sarah: Roy won't let that happen. Lucas: Yeah, I hope not. Sarah: He believes in something. You don't. Lucas: It doesn't matter. Good people die every day believing in things.

...

Alton: I saw the sunrise this morning. I think I know what I am now. There's...There's a world, built on top of ours. People live there. I think they're like me. Roy: We saw it. Sarah: They're like you? Alton: Yes, I think so. Sarah: I understand. Alton: Lucas? Lucas: I believe you. Alton: Good.

Cue The Ranch...

Roy [shot and cuffed to a railing]: Doak...don't...please.

...

Paul: You know, I have to say, Ive really been looking forward to meeting you. They think you're a weapon.Alton: I'm not.Paul: And the ranch thinks you are their saver.Alton: I'm not any of those things. I belong in another world. There are people there. They watch us. They've been watching us for a very long time. I need to go where I belong.

Take your pick: ET? Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Starman?

Paul [to Lucas]: Is it too much to ask for you to punch me in the face?

...

Alton: Dad? Roy: Yeah? Alton: Are you scared? Roy: Yes. Alton: You don't have to worry about me. Roy: I like worrying about you. Alton: You don't have to anymore. Roy: I'll always worry about you Alton. That's the deal.

...

Lucas [to Roy]: Could we go back to Texas now?

...

FBI agent: Just explain to me how, with multiple types of aerial and ground surveillance surrounding the area, they could simply walk away, undetected.Lucas: I dont know, but if he didn't want you to see him, you wouldn't see him. Look, I can tell it to you as many times as you want. My story is not changing because its true. You know. You all saw the same shit I saw. But keep asking me if you want to.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

You dream of success. Or some of you do. But: where do the ambitions of the team end and the ambition of each individual begin? Where ought it to begin and end? In other words, how far will you go to assure that at least you "make it"? For example, what if it was only John Belushi that rose to the top and no one ever heard of the others? Or think Monty without the rest of the Pythons.

After all, we live in a culture where celebrity and fame has practically replaced Christianity as our new religion of choice. Standing out in the crowd. Isn't that really the only way now in which to separate yourself from "the masses".

On the other hand, there is also the pride that some feel in being part of something much smaller but more genuine. Being "independent" and not "selling out".

Look for everything you need to know about the gaps between improvisational comedy and comedy that is entirely scripted and rehearsed. Obviously, some can make that leap and others cannot.

You have the audience more or less choose the comedic context and then you [as a team] build that into a lot of laughs. As opposed to writing down, memorizing and then rehearsing over and over and over again a particular "routine". In other words, you are "funny on your feet".

Sam [voiceover]: Okay, a little bit of history. In 1955, a group of actors in Chicago invented the idea that improvisational theater could be an art form unto itself, not just a warm-up for other theater.

...

Miles [voiceover]: Now, everyone has their own take on what's most important in improv. But even 60 years later they still boil down to three basic rules.Allison [voiceover]: Number one: Say yes. Which really means just agreeing with the reality your partner creates and then building on that...Lindsay [voiceover]: Number two: It's all about the group. Yes. It's not about you looking good. It's also not about looking funny. No. Or showboating. It's about a group working together in the moment to create something that never happened before, you know, or willnever happen again.Miles [voiceover]: Finally, and this is the most important one: Don't think. It's all about getting out of your head. It's about impulse. It's about living in the moment. It's about now.Bill [voiceover]: In improv, there are no mistakes. Like Del close once said, "fall and then figure out what to do on the way down."

...

Bonnie [to the group]: The business model for selling $5 tickets to a show is not exactly sound. The theater's closing. We've gotta be out of there in four weeks. They're selling. Another Trump building, I think.Lindsay: New York City is over.Jack [immitating Trump]: New York City, you're fired.Miles: Improv for America, you're fired. Bill: All of America, you're fired.Jack: What the hell was that?Bill: That was Trump!

...

Bonnie: I called Hugh Finn. He's bringing over some producers from Weekend Live.Miles: Hey, Jack, don't pull some showboat shit out there.Jack: What? When do I do that?Miles: You always do that. Anyone from the industry shows up, you turn into a one-man audition tape.Allison: You did it when the guy from Conan came, when Law and Order came.

Weekend Live of course being Saturday Night Live. On the other hand, unlike SNL, these guys are actually funny.

Bill [to the group]: I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that should impersonate my dad when he's basically in a coma.

...

Jack [having been selected for Weekend Live]: How'd it go?Sam: Um...I was late, and they wouldn't let me in.Jack: What? Why? Why?Sam: I don't know.Jack: How late were you?Sam: I was, like, 20 minutes late.Jack: Twenty minutes late, and they wouldn't let you in?Sasm: All right. Maybe I was 30 minutes late.

Jack: I was just so in it, and I felt, "if I don't get this, I'm gonna kill myself." I literally thought that, and I believe that to be true.Bill: Oh, you mean like if you had to live our lives? Like, if you had to continue living like us, you'd kill yourself?

...

Jack: Hey, I've got a few friends that want to submit some writing. When would be, like, a good time to talk to Timothy about that?Weekend Live producer: Don't ever talk to Timothy about your funny friends. First year, just don't get fired.Jack: Right, right. So just don't ever do it during the first year?Producer: I'm sorry. Was my tone, like, not sarcastic enough? Never do it. Ever.

...

Miles [watching Jack on Weekend Live]: Not funny. Skillful, but not funny.Allison: It's like when something sounds funny, but it isn't funny.

Then Lena Dunham introduces ELEL.

Jack: You know, Miles, I'm gonna put in a good word for you, but it's not my job to give.Miles: Right. But they'll want me, right? I...I taught you. I taught you everything. Just tell them that. They have Jack Mercer. Now they can get his teacher.Miles: I'm gonna...I'm gonna recommend all you guys. 'Cause I think that's only fair.Miles: This is very unattractive. Your, like, little hat...And your...your attitude. This whole like, "I'm bigger than everybody." It's like... You're just like us. Your head is so big right now. Your---your whole egocentric world...You just have...You're completely unaware.Jack: You are striking out at me right now, and I don't understand why, because I already told you all I can do is submit your packet and let the chips fall where they may.

...

Miles: I just don't feel like he believes in me.Lindsay: My dad always told me, "the thing with an easy sell is that the thing has to actually be easy to sell."Miles: What does that even mean?Lindsay: You have to have the goods.Miles: I don't have the goods?Lindsay: You can work on the goods instead of working on Jack. Do the work.

...

Newspaper headline: IMPROV FOR AMERICA TO SHUT DOWN FOREVER

...

Sam: I gotta tell you something. I didn't...Jack: What...what is it?Sam: I didn't go to my Weekend Live audition. I just didn't go.Jack: Why? I mean, why? Why wouldn't you go?Sam: I don't know. I freaked out.Jack: I told you I would...Sam: Life is so short, and you have to do things that you believe in, or what is the point of all of this? And I watch that show, and it's not for me. I like my life how it is right now. I like The Commune.Jack: I know, Sam. I know.Sam: The day you guys asked me to join The Commune was the greatest day of my life. Jack: But, honey, you can't do improv forever, okay? It just...It ends, all right? And I don't want it to end either, but it will. It just will. We've gotta jump to the next Lily pad.Sam: But I like this Lily pad.

...

Sam [to her students]: There are two types of bad shows. There's the type of bad show where we sell each other out onstage and nobody hangs out afterwards, and then there's the type of bad show where you all go down together, and then you come to the bar afterwards and you laugh about it. That is the type of bad show I want you to have.

...

Jack: Uh, these are some writing samples from some of the improvisers in my group, and they're really a talented bunch of guys. I just wondered if you wanted to look at 'em.Timothy [the Lorne Michaels guy]: Jack, you should worry about yourself.Jack: Oh, okay.Timothy: I'm cutting you from "jugglers with vertigo."Jack: Oh. Okay.Timothy: You know, you're not what we call a pure talent. You're not a virtuoso. You're the kind of player who should write for himself.

...

Miles [watching Jack steal their material for a Weekend Live skit]: He can't do that.Bill: We've been replaced by Ben Stiller.

...

Miles: You're a fucking thief!Jack: Miles, you don't understand how hard this job is, okay? I have tried to sell you. It is not easy.[Miles punches him in the face]

...

Miles: Where were you?Lindsay: I was out here.Miles: Doing what?Lindsay: I didn't wanna embarrass myself in front of my coworkers.Bill: What does that mean?Lindsay: I got the writing job on Weekend Live.Miles [punching the wall]: Motherfucker!Bill: They gave it to you?Allison: You didn't even tell us you were submitting. That's so weird.Bill: We showed you our packet. And you didn't even say a thing?Lindsay: I didn't think I was gonna get it, and I was embarrassed.Bill: That is so shady. And you're not even gonna last five minutes there. 'Cause you have no work ethic.Allison: Bill's right.Lindsay: You've taken nine years, Allison, and you still haven't finished your doodle book.

...

Lindsay: No one wants to say this, Miles, but you don't have it. You were never inches away from anything.Miles: Fuck you, Lindsay.Lindsay: You won't, 'cause I'm not 22 and I'm not your student.

...

Sam: You gotta let go, Miles. All this Weekend Live shit is meaningless. You've got The Commune. We only got one more show. I don't wanna do it alone.

...

Sam [voiceover]: Del Close once said watching great improv is like watching people put the plane together when they're already in the sky. It's not meant to last, except as an act of love. It passes in a moment and disappears.

...

Sam: Wow!Lindsay: Come on!Bill: Well, it needs a lot of work, but it's ours. We get to program the whole thing, and we're just gonna try to find some, like, local kids who are hungry, try to build a scene here in town, you know?Sam: Has anyone had a particularly hard day? You.Bill: I...I buried my dad.Sam: Oh!

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Someone once opined that, “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”

The part, in other words, where youthful idealism thumps smack dab into the brute facticity embedded in the real world.

And this may well be no less true of folks who either were the President of the United States or of folks who tried to be.

Though, with respect to the man who will soon vacate the White House, I suspect that he was always more or less the calculating type. Much like the man who is about to take his place. Unless, of course, at 70, Donald Trump actually still is an idealist. If not a socialist.

And certainly a narcissist.

Not that this particular film focuses the beam anywhere near this particular agenda. It revolves far more around the "personal". An exploration into the actual day that Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson had their "first date".

Politics therefore is more or less in the background. It revolves instead around contexts like this one:

In the scene outside the movie theater screening Do the Right Thing, Avery Goodman asks Michelle and Barack if they think Mookie did the right thing in the climactic scene.

Trust me: If you are not much into films in which the main characters just walk and talk [think Before Sunrise] steer clear of this one.

Basically, the film takes us inside the heads of two very gifted young black folks and explores the sort of conversations that they had in a world that folks who are not black in a racist culture could not really even imagine. In particular, the tug of war between political idealism and achieving "the good life".

IMDb

According to director Richard Tanne, all of the main events of the film did actually occur on the Obama's first date with the exception of the community meeting which happened at a later date.

In the scene outside the movie theater screening Do the Right Thing, Mr. Goodman asks Michelle and Barack if they think Mookie did the right thing in the climactic scene. In the DVD commentary, Spike Lee said he has only been asked this question by white viewers, and that viewers who question the riot's justification are implicitly failing to see the difference between property and the life of a black man.

Mom: Thought it wasn't a date.Michelle: It wasn't and it isn't.Mom: Thought you said he was just another smooth-talking brother. You're going to an awful lot of trouble for just another smooth-talker.

...

Michelle: It's not a date, Daddy. He's a summer associate I told y'all about, the one from Harvard Law. I mentioned I worked legal aid and he invited me to a community event at the Gardens.Father: Yeah.Michelle: Because it doesn't get more romantic than broken plumbing and underfunded schools.

...

Toot: Well, where's she from?Barack: Chicago.Toot: Uh-huh. Which part?Barack: The side that's predominantly black.Toot: Okay, so she's...?Barack: Yes, Toot. Her skin is of the darker persuasion.

Michelle: Barack, you seem like a really sweet guy, but how many times do I have to tell you we're not going out together?Barack: Mm, well, Michelle, thank you for saying that. You seem like a real sweet girl. But I have to correct you. We are in fact out and we are in fact together.Michelle: But not on a date. This is not a date.

...

Michelle [to Barack]: It's hard enough being a woman at a giant corporate law firm. For all the talk of equality that goes around and all those filled quotas, I'm still surrounded by mostly men. So, I gotta work just a little bit harder to earn everyone's respect. I gotta work a little bit harder to be taken seriously. Now add on that I'm black. All that extra work I put in to compensate for being a woman? Being black erases that and brings me back down to zero. So, now I'm working double-time just to be seen for who I am and what I'm capable of. Now, how's it gonna look to a guy like Thompson if I swoop in and start dating the first cute black guy who walks through the firm's doors? The liberal-minded people will think it's precious and the closed-minded people will think it's pathetic.

...

Barack: Did you watch Good Times?Michelle: Not a family staple.Barack: Really? There wasn't a black family in Chicago that didn't watch Good Times?Michelle: We were more of a Brady Bunch,Dick Van Dyke kind of family.

...

Barack: "Dy-no-mite!" Do you remember that?Michelle: Yes, I remember the line.Barack: The character's name was J.J.. He was kind of a screwup. He would steal here and there, couldn't read or write, talked jive. You know, just a bad TV stereotype, right? But, see, as the show progressed, J.J. developed this interest in painting. As it turned out, he actually had a lot of talent. But he didn't take it seriously. Not until his dad, who was this tough, blue-collar guy, encouraged him to keep painting. He saw it as his son's only way out of the projects.Michelle: What did he paint?Barack: Black ghetto life. They were crisp, exaggerated, very colorful. His style was a lot like Ernie Barnes. That's because Ernie Barnes did all the paintings for the show.

...

Michelle: Is your mother still alive?Barack: Hmm, oh, yeah. Still in Jakarta. She's a wonderful lady.Michelle: But you don't see her much?Barack: Nah, she has her own life. But she's brilliant, warm. Truly wonderful.Michelle: And she's white?Barack: Snow white. Born in Wichita, Kansas.Michelle: A white woman and a black man getting married and having a kid back then. They were ahead of their time.Barack: You want the God's honest truth about my folks?Michelle: Sure.Barack: Okay. My mother thought Harry Belafonte was the most handsome man on the face of the planet. Yeah, I'd say chocolate was her favorite flavor, too. No, really, I think their attraction was that simple. My father looked like Nat King Cole and my mother looked like Patsy Cline.

...

Michelle: And your own religious proclivities?Barack: Let's just say I'm still evolving.Michelle: What were you raised?Barack: Nothing, really. My mom didn't associate with any one religion.Michelle: And your father? Was he like you?Barack: About the only thing my father and I had in common was that we both went to Harvard. The only difference is he got kicked out.

...

Barack: Dying to see Do the Right Thing.Michelle: Sounds interesting enough.Barack: Blick, Thompson, and Cohen were talking about it in the office. And Thompson said the film might be racist towards white people.Michelle: No, he didn't.Barack: He didn't mean anything by it. He's a little out of touch, that's all.Michelle: I'm just tired of being two different people. I played that game at Princeton and I played it again at Harvard. There were white kids at school who would talk to me in class, but if I saw them out on the quad and they were with their other friends, they would walk right past me without so much as a nod. Now, obviously, the firm is not like that, but sometimes when I'm leaving Southside in the morning, headed for the Loop, I feel like I'm leaving Planet Black and landing on Planet White.Barack: Come on. You got wooed just like me. You got wined and dined. You saw the corporate culture, the racial culture. You knew the score and you still said yes.

...

Barack: I'm not suggesting you silence yourself at work. I'm just wondering why you chose to work at a corporate firm where you knew your silence would be expected. And, really, what I'm wondering is why you're wasting the fight you have inside you on battles you can't win and issues you don't care about. Michelle: Excuse me? You think because we spend one afternoon together and you tried to buy me a sandwich, you're entitled to pass judgment on the choices I made in my life? You think I'm wasting my life.Barack: Now, I never used those words.Michelle: You didn't have to use those words. You used other ones, and they stung just as much.Barack: Why? If you really loved what you were doing, would you be bothered by what I said? No. You'd tell me to go screw myself and you'd go on your merry way making tons of cash and doing trademark law for the rest of your life.Michelle: And how do you know that's not exactly what I plan to do?Barack: Because you spent two years of law school in Gannett House working pro bono cases for poor single moms. And my guess is that it kills you to know you can't put the same passion and intelligence towards cases that actually mean something.Michelle: You're more than welcome to pass judgment on your own father. You know what? You're more than welcome to pass judgment on me. But quite frankly, it sounds like you know me about as little as you knew him.Barack: Michelle...Michelle: And the biggest offense is this is coming from a guy who quit community organizing for Harvard Law only to take a summer position at the same corporate firm he's railing against. Now that is the height of hypocrisy.

...

Barack [at a meeting to get a Community Center for the kids]: Harold Washington was one of the reasons I moved to Chicago. When I first came here, every barber shop and chicken shack on the Southside had a squeaky-clean picture of him hanging up on the wall for everyone to see. Chicago's first black mayor...But even Mayor Washington disappointed in some respects. He had to face the great truth of our country...that it's not easy to get things done. You know, the founders made it that way on purpose. They made it messy so that no one law, no one government, no one man, could decide the fate of everything and everyone. In very simple terms, we got a heck of a lot of different people with a heck of a lot of different agendas. But I also believe that people, most people, are basically, at their core, good people. So, if at first we don't understand their agenda, city council, the aldermen, and the state senator we have to try our hardest to understand who they are and what they need. We have to let go of judgment.

For some of course that explains a lot. His entire administration for example.

Michelle: Okay, so what about that moment in the church before the meeting?Barack: Which?Michelle: I think Bernadette said it about you finally dating a sister.Barack: Who knows with those two? They love to gossip.Michelle: Is it true?Barack: Is what true?Michelle: That you never date black women?Barack: Not true.Michelle: But you did date white women.Barack: I've dated a couple white women, yes.Michelle: Which do you prefer? Come on, buster. Now it's your turn to ante up.

...

Barack: So, why did you come to Chicago?Michelle: To try and make a difference. Thought I would, too. Thought maybe I'd work civil cases. Help women, empower them. Being at that meeting today aroused some of those old dreams. Lit some kind of fire. But those last couple years, the corporate firmsdescend upon the campus like a pack of wolves. And they're so appealing. I wanted to be in a position to pay off my loans, pay my folks back, live a little, enjoy life.Barack: There's nothing wrong with that.Michelle: There's nothing wrong with it until there is.Barack: Yeah, I know what you mean. I just feel like something else is pulling at me. I wonder if I can write books or hold a position of influence in civil rights.Michelle: Politics?Barack: Maybe.

...

Avery: What did you think of the film?Michelle: What did I think? I liked it.Avery: Well, all the hoopla leading up to it, I had to see for myself.Michelle: Oh, what did you think?Avery: Compelling, though the ending was puzzling and more than a little infuriating.

...

Barack: So, you got around to seeing the movie, I take it.Avery: Yes, yes, we did. In fact, I was just explaining to Michelle how angry that ending made me. Why would the deliveryman have thrown the trash can through his employer's window? He must have known his actions would cause the mob to riot. It seemed totally irrational.Barack: Let me put it to you another way, Avery. If Mookie hadn't thrown the trash can, maybe the crowd would have turned on Sal and his sons. So, instead of the store being destroyed, they might be dead. And Mookie knew the insurance would cover the damage to the store. He was saving Sal's life.

...

Barack [to Michelle after Avery had left]: You know I only said that to make Avery feel better. Mookie threw that trash can because he was fucking angry. What a coincidence seeing him here. That's really wild.Michelle: It wasn't a coincidence. It was cosmic justice. I knew damn well going out with you was the wrong thing to do and don't even try to convince me otherwise, Barack, because there's nothing you can say.Barack: Nothing?

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

The blind man puts it this way: "There is nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact that there is no god."

You either grasp the full implications of this [philosophically or otherwise] or you don't. Out in the real world, for example. After all, with God there is no question of something being good or evil. And there is no possibilty of getting away with something that is deemed to be evil by God. And there is absolutely no possibility of not being punished for it.

In not existing, God is everything here.

Now, it is clearly evil to rob the blind man. But the blind man has money and you need money. You rationalize it. Only it turns out this is no ordinary blind man. In fact he is rather extraordinary. And what some would call extraordinarily evil. Blind or not. He is the man -- the nihilist -- who thinks through the moral consequences of living in a Godless universe. In fact, it is always what he wants that jump starts morality.

In other words, he's got his reasons for kidnapping the woman. And, from his point of view, it is entirely just. In fact, he is careful to draw any number of lines that others might find commendable.

One of those horror classics in which, in an amoral world, the monster is the man.

IMDb

Stephen Lang only has about thirteen lines of dialogue in the whole movie (most of which comes near the end of the film.

The film's budget was less than $10 million. Two months after release it grossed over $140 million.

The contents of the turkey baster: director Alvarez said he used the same contents the x-rated film industry uses.

Exterior shots of the house were filmed in Detroit. Interior shots were filmed 4500 miles away in Pomaz, Hungary - near Budapest.

Alex: Is that a new tattoo?Rocky: Yeah. I got it last night. Ladybug.Alex: Why a ladybug?Rocky: When my dad left, my mom started drinking and she told me that my dad's leaving was all my fault. And I missed him a lot so, I'd cry. She got so fed up with the crying that she would lock me in the trunk of her car. Sometimes for hours. But there is this uh... a little hole in the trunk and one time a ladybug flew in. It kept me company. It made me feel safe.

...

Rocky: Wait, is he blind?Alex: He has lost his sight in Iraq or something. Rocky: It's kind of fucked up to rob a blind guy, isn't it?Money: Just because he's blind don't mean he's a fucking saint.

Cindy [bound and gagged in the cellar...muffling]: Help me! Please help me...Alex [to Rocky]: We need to get the fuck out of here right now.

This cellar is straight out of Silence Of the Lambs: a character in the film itself.

Rocky [looking at newspaper headline -- Cindy Roberts Found Innocent Of Vehicular Manslaughter]: She's the one who killed his daughter, Alex.

...

Rocky: What are you doing?Alex: I'm pressing the panic button. That means you get in range, the system will call 911 to the police.Rocky: Alex: No, wait. We can't go to jail.Alex: No, we won't. Okay, this is robbery versus kidnap and murder. The police won't care about us or why we're here in the first place. Who'd have lead them get this guy.Rocky: But then we couldn't keep the money.

...

The Blind Man [switching off the light as the cellar goes pitch black]: Now you're gonna see what I see.

The Blind Man: She should have gone to prison, but rich girls don't go to jail.Rocky: None of this is is going to bring your daughter back.The Blind Man: That's not really true. Cindy took my child away from me. I thought it's only fair that she give me a new one. She was pregnant with my baby. You killed them both. You have to held accountable.

Rocky [as her body is being hoisted up]: What are you doing?The Blind Man: I'm not a rapist. I never forced myself on her.Rocky: Stop.The Blind Man: I promised I would set her free just as soon as she gave me a child. And now she's gone.

...

Rocky [as the Blind Man prepares the turkey baster]: You can't do this to me.The Blind Man: There is nothing a man cannot do once he accepts the fact that there is no god.

...

The Blind Man: Nine months and I will give you your life back.

...

Reporter [on TV]: A retired army vet who fought for our country in Iraq and lost his sight as a result of a grenade splinter. Last night, 2 burglars broke into his home and attempted to rob and brutally attacked him. This visually impaired man was able to defend himself, shooting and killing both of his attackers on the spot. Now, the man did sustain some injuries but doctors say he is in stable condition. He'll be released from the hospital soon and able to return to his home. No goods were reported stolen by the victim.

Sequel? You bet.

A sequel isn't set up, but the movie makes it clear that Lang's character is still alive. As it turns out, director Fede Alvarez did set up a sequel in an end scene that got cut, in turn making the movie feel as though it was from the 70s or 80s and not a breeding ground for more movies to come. movieweb.com

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

And while director Jodie Foster denies that Lee is based on Jim, no one in the known universe takes that seriously. Unless of course it's actually true.

So the first thing you find yourself wondering is whether or not something like this could actually happen. After all, money [either mad or monstrous] can bring out the very worst in us. Even among those who imagine that it is bringing out the very best instead.

There's the politics of money, sure, but there is also the manner in which each of us as individuals will construct very own personal narrative, our very own personal agenda with respect to either earning it or using it.

Or [of course] losing it.

As a consequence, some [inevitably] will go off the deep end. For example, Kyle Budwell, who as "an irate investor who has lost everything forcefully takes over their studio." Only Kyle is no Marxist revolutionary. He's not here to Occupy Wall Street. He's just pissed off because he made a shitty investment. He lost 60 grand on Walt and Ibis.

Lots of us no doubt have fantasized about doing something like this. Taking over one or another media component of "the system" and letting everyone know what is really going on in the world. In particular, how the "little guy" is always being fucked over but how now at least the "little guy" is fighting back. But the bottom line here is that it's not really about "the system". It's not crony capitalism or political economy so much as the Bernie Madoff rotten apples.

Then there's the reality of making money in a world in which the technology [and enormously convoluted algorithm contraptions] used to create and then to facilitate the transactions can create complexities that are far, far, far beyond the comprehension of your average citizen. Not to mention your average facilitator in Washington.

Finally, this is one of those film where we can pin down the precise moment when it jumps the shark.

Lee [on TV]: Okay, here we go. Are you listening? Are you paying attention out there? Good. Because it's about to get complicated, so I'm gonna start out slow and make it nice and simple for you. You don't have a clue where your money is. See, once upon a time, you could walk into your bank, and they'd open a vault and point to a gold brick. Not anymore. Your money - that thing that you bust your ass for - it's nothing more than a few photons of energy traveling through a massive network of fiber optic cables. Why'd we do it? We did it to make it go faster. Because your money better be fast - faster than the other guy's. But if you want faster markets with faster trades, faster profits, faster everything, sometimes you're gonna blow a tire. And that is exactly what happened yesterday at 1:07 p.m., Eastern Standard Time.

Diane: Lee has read the talking points, right? Because I'm in a tough position here, and I just want to make sure that he sticks to the script.Patty: He will. You know us, Diane. We don't do "gotcha" journalism here. Hell, we don't do journalism, period.

...

Lee: The name is Lee Gates. The show is Money Monster, the day is Friday, and the Dow has dropped a seismic seven points this morning. So what does that mean for the market...Should you...or should you? And the answer is, who cares about the Dow? It's a measly 30 companies. So why do you people keep paying attention to it? Well, probably because our network insists on tracking it. Right here at the bottom of the screen in large font all day. And why do they do that? Because you people keep paying so much attention to it.

...

Lee [on the air]: The name is Lee Gates, the show is Money Monster. Without risk, there is no reward. Should I sell? Should I unload? GET SOME BALLS!

...

Lee [taking a vest packed with explosives out of a box]: How do I know it won't blow up?Kyle: 'Cause I have the detonator. All right? If my thumb comes off this trigger, then we all explode.Lee: What if your thumb gets tired?Kyle: You better hope it don't.

...

Patty [to the crew]: Okay, listen up, everybody. If you're not manning a camera or a boom, get out right now. Stop what you're doing. If you're not core-one control room, get going. Don't look up. Just go. Right now.

...

Kyle [to the camera]: All right. I want everyone to know something. I might be the one with the gun here, but I'm not the real criminal. It's people like these guys! They're stealing everything from us and they're getting away with it, too. Nobody's asking how. Nobody's asking why....You got to open your eyes out there. It's not like the government's no help. How they just look the other way, since after they're done stealing our money, they barely even have to pay any taxes on it! I'm telling you, it's rigged. The whole goddamn thing. They're stealing the country out from under us. Not the Muslims. Not the Chinese. Them. It's all fixed. They like how the math adds up, so they got to keep rewriting the equation. Which means, the one time you finally get a little extra money, you try and be smart about it, you turn on the TV. Boom. That's how they fucking take it. They take it so fast they don't even have to explain it! They literally own the airwaves. They literally control the information. But not today.

...

Kyle: You must think I'm so stupid. Trying to fucking buy me off. I'm not stupid, Lee. I walked in here knowing there was only one way this show was gonna end. I came in here knowing I'm not walking out.

...

Lee: It was a computer glitch.Kyle: A glitch! A glitch! It was a fucking glitch! A glitch! Shut up about the glitch! All right? What the hell does that even mean? You see, you don't even know. I'm not stupid, Lee. I told you. People just at home accepting this shit, they're the stupid ones, because somehow these clowns lost $800 million overnight. Overnight. And nobody's even actually explained how. How is something like that even possible, huh? How is that even fair? How's that fair? It's not a rhetorical question. I want a fucking answer.

...

Kyle: Two people I came here to talk to. Him and Walt fucking Camby.Patty [in the control booth]: All right, well, then let's get him Walt fucking Camby already.Lee: All right, so let's get him Walt fucking Camby already.Patty: Right. Exactly. Throw him under the bus.Lee: Look, he was supposed to be here today. He didn't show up. It's his company. It's his crash. So let's see what he has to say.

...

Captain Powell: Are you proposing we shoot the star of a TV show live, on air, in front of millions of people?Detective: Yeah.

...

Lee: Where are your quants, Diane? Where are your quants?Patty [from the control booth]: That's good. Go with that. Get an answer.Lee: The quants you used. The guy who actually designed the algorithm that crashed. Where is he? Is he in that building right there behind you? 'Cause I think I'd like to ask him a few questions.

...

Diane [from Ibis headquarters]: What happened?Patty: He just shot out your monitor on the stage because you're giving him the same corporate bullshit!

...

Kyle: You really gonna stand there in your $1,000 suit and compare scores with me? Huh? My honest job pays me $14 an hour, you cocksucker. So let's start there. You know how far $14 an hour gets you here in New York? Huh? You know how much of that is left after I pay my rent and all my fucking bills? I keep paddling as hard as I can just to stay above water. It takes everything I got! And that's before the kid gets here. How the hell am I gonna supposed to support him, huh? How am I gonna take care of him?

...

Won Joon [on phone]: Listen, lady, I'm not getting mixed up in all this. I was hired to design a program. My job was about data. It was about math. It was about theoreticals. That's it.Diane: Yes, but this glitch was still a result of a program you designed.Won Joon: Wrong. It's user error. They're only calling it a glitch because nobody understands how the algo works. And if nobody can understand the math, then nobody has to explain the money.Diane: Well, that's why I'm calling you. I want to understand.Won Joon: Fine. Algorithms make patterns, they don't break them. And this algo was designed to move in and out of hundreds of positions in fractions of seconds.Diane: Right.Won Joon: What it wasn't designed to do is consume large amounts of capital, accumulate leveraged positions or hold a portfolio for any extended period of time.Diane: Wait. What does that mean?Won Joon: It means there is no way that this algorithm could lose $800 million in one afternoon. It is literally a mathematical impossibility. So whatever went wrong, whatever investment went haywire, it's not the computer's fault. There's human fingerprints all over this.Diane: Whose fingerprints?Won Joon: Like I said, I don't want to get involved in this.Diane: Is there anything you can give me?Won Joon: Do the math. You can't find your boss, and he can't find $800 million.

...

Captain: If we take out the receiver on Gates' chest, what's his chance of survival?Swat team member: 80% that he makes it.Captain: Okay. What's the chance the bullet's on target?Swat team member: If it's a clean shot, 100%.Swat team member: 100%. Come on, let's be realistic here.Swat team member: I am being. Listen, 80% sounds about right to us, to an officer.Captain: 80%. So we got an 80% chance of an 80% chance.

...

Patty [in control room]: Lee, Walt Camby has landed. He's on his way to Federal Hall. He'll be there in less than 20 minutes. And get this. He wasn't in Geneva yesterday. He was in South Africa. So he lied to you. He lied to us. He's been lying this whole time. That means you've been lying, too, Lee. To everybody that's been watching. To Kyle.Lee: Oh, my God.

...

Ron [on phone]: Patty! I just left the SEC. I've been trying to call you.Patty: Yeah, Ron, listen.Ron: Yeah, they got nothing over here.Patty: What?Ron: Ibis's algorithm trades in dark pools, so all their transactions are concealed. The one thing I was able to find out was, on the day of the crash, Ibis's transaction volume dropped by nearly 90%.Patty: What does that mean?Ron: I don't know.

...

Patty [into Lee's earpiece]: Ibis is a pig in a prom dress, Lee.

...

Lee: You tried to convince us it's all too complicated for us to understand. But it's not that complicated at all, is it? It's actually the oldest story in the book. Fraud. You took money out of your fund and you invested it here.Patty: Go.Lee: Right here in platinum mines in South Africa. Does that sound familiar?Walt: I don't have our portfolio in front of me. I can't exactly...Lee: You really need your portfolio to know where you put $800 million?Walt: I don't put that much money anywhere. The algorithms control our day-to-day...Lee: But that's not how high-frequency trading is supposed to work, is it? They don't just put that much money in one place and just leave it there, do they? It wasn't the algos pullin' the strings, it was you.

...

Kyle: You're a thief, Walt. And a crook. And I want to hear you admit it.Walt: I didn't steal a dime and we didn't do anything illegal.Kyle: Bullshit! You manipulated stock prices. You bribed people. You broke the law.Wat: What law? Name one law you can prove I broke. No, don't look at Lee. He can't prove it, either. This is just business. And this is how business is done.Kyle: That doesn't make it right.Walt: Oh, please. Tell that to the Chinese. Tell that to the Russians. 'Cause if it's not us, it's gonna be them. Hell, it already is. You see, that's the irony about all this. You only came after me 'cause I lost you money. Nobody was asking questions when everybody was makin' a profit. You just gobbled up every dollar of stock you could afford. As long as we kept paying you 18% ROI every year, then you could keep bragging to your friends about what a genius you are. But, hey, you're not a genius, you're a stockholder.

...

Kyle [waving the gun]: I told you what I want.Walt: Yeah, I get it. You want a profit. That's what everybody wants.Kyle: No, that's not what I want....I want to hear you admit it, you son of a bitch!Lee: I think he just did.Kyle: No, I want to hear him say that he lied, that what he did was wrong.Walt: Wrong? What does that even mean, wrong?Kyle: You got three seconds till I blow your ass outta this goddamn building.Kyle: Three.Walt: What's wrong with makin' a profit? What's wrong with being faster...Kyle: Two!Walt: What's wrong with betting big? Winning isn't wrong...Kyle: One!Walt: Fine! It was wrong. It was wrong. It was wrong. It was wrong.Kyle: That's all I wanted to hear, man.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

When Naomi is asked, "what's that thing that makes you most want to get up in the morning?", she doesn't hesitate. "I like money".

And she likes it enough in the world of investment banking to put up with all the shit involved in being a woman in what literally for decades had been the boys club.

Naturally however she is as beautiful as she is brainy. And sex still sells. But: to fuck or not to fuck...

It's a world that is entirely Machiavellian. Everyone has an agenda as they hustle and bustle to get every scrap of information they can find that gives them an edge.

And then of course all the shit that is hard-wired into capitalism this high up in the food chain.

The film is described as "the first female-driven Wall Street film". And given that "...all scenes shot with Bloomberg TV reporters were shot at Bloomberg, using real Bloomberg anchors, producers, directors and crew..." it is not exactly going to provide probing insights into the capitalist political economy.

Again, it's just one more examination of the "rotten apples" syndrome on Wall Street. The system is more or less okay but some of the players go a bit too far in pursuit of the bottom line. It is as though their cronies in the White House and on Capital Hill did not even exist.

Think Billions on Showtime.

Of course to the extent that competition is rife in any particular segment of the economy is the extent to which ruthlessness is rife. It is built right into the very nature of "the system". And, in that respect, as we see here, women can be men too. Flagrantly corrupt in other words.

The bottom line is that sooner or later everyone becomes the fucking bastard we have all been taught to hate. Or love as the case may be.

Think Boiler Room.

Oh, and welcome to the mindboggling [and mind blowing] world of cyber security.

Look for the revolving door.

IMDb

Bloomberg - a lead sponsor - did not pay to be a part of the film, but instead lended resources to assist in the production including two Bloomberg executives - Mindy Massucci (TV) and Michael Marinello (Corporate) - who consulted with the producers and writers throughout the production.

Neel: So what happened with Dynacorps?Napmi: Neel, I have taken nine Silicon Valley companies public in the last five years and you want to talk about the one I didn't take to the finish line? I work for the largest investment bank in the world. We both know I found you guys capital when you were just a couple kids with a laptop and a dream. So we can talk about Dynacorps or we can talk about you and how I'm gonna grow your company so you can build technology that will transform people's lives.

...

Sam: I think these girls look at me as what not to do. How to go to law school and still end up broke.Naomi: Well, I'm sure there must be one young idealist in here somewhere.

...

Naomi: You got a file on us?Sam: I imagine we have a file on everyone.

...

Naomi [at a support group for professional women]: I am not going to sit here and tell you that I only do what I do to take care of other people, because it is okay to do it for ourselves. For how it makes us feel. Secure? Yeah. Powerful? Absolutely. I am so glad that it's finally acceptable for women to talk about ambition openly. But don't let money be a dirty word. We can like that too.

...

Naomi [to Edward the Cache founder]: I remember what you told me the first day we met. You said, "We're not a social media company with privacy settings. We're a privacy company that can build a social network. An impenetrable social network." I understood that. The need for it. I felt it in my gut. Now, some other people thought you guys were paranoid. Right? Investors wouldn't go for it. Now fast forward. Edward Snowden. The Sony hack. Nude photos of actresses. Your revenue jumps. Your competitors start rolling out. But we were ahead of the curve because we understood that it gets harder every day to trust people in this world. And security is the hottest commodity.

...

Benji: You with the green pens.Michael: The color of money.

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Sam: I'm interested in one of your clients, Benji Akers.Michael: Yeah, not sure how I can help you with that. My relationship with my clients is strictly confidential.Sam: Of course, but these hedge fund guys they always seem to have some way to stay out of trouble but they need someone like you from the big bank. Now, you have regulations and Compliance breathing down your throat. So if someone's gonna take the fall it seems to me it's gonna be you. Not Benji Akers.Michael:Take the fall for what?Sam: Could be anything.

...

Marin: What happens when Cachet gets hacked?Sam: Hacked? It's anonymized and encrypted at every level.Marin: Yeah, you haven't met my ex. We were beta testing. It was actually kind of helpful. We plugged all the holes, but he'll keep trying. There will probably be others.Sam: Others? What do you mean?Marin: What do you mean what do I mean? That's what we do for a challenge. The naked photos, who knows? All right, it's called a man-in-the-middle attack. So users want to be able to access the network on multiple devices, obviously. But that opens up the possibility of somebody implanting malware on the key server.

...

Naomi: A rumor started that your network, as encrypted as it is might be vulnerable still to a certain kind of hacker.Edward: Sounds like you met Marin.Naomi: Yes, actually. And I was interviewing employees and...Edward: Unfortunately, our business can attract some colorful characters.Naomi: But you need to make sure that your employees are as much a firewall as your code.Edward: Look. I can promise you we've never been hacked. Okay. In theory, there's a back door to everything. But we stay one step ahead. That's the game.Naomi: Good. That's what I wanted to hear.

...

Randall: Ed feels like you lack confidence in his IPO! No one wants to be told they have an ugly baby!!! What is the fucking problem?Naomi: There is no problem. It's a beautiful fucking baby and I have absolute confidence in this IPO.

...

Edward [to Erin]: We're here to talk about human connection in the digital age. People crave this connection. But they don't want Big Brother tracking their every move. They don't want the NSA monitoring pictures of their kids. That's where we come in.

...

John [to Naomi]: ...what we're talking about is a rumor here. And rumors, they're the wild card. You can't control them. And once you let them inside your head well, you're fucking lost.

...

Cahn [of Cory]: He's never been flagged by you guys or the SEC.Sam: Are you saying he doesn't know any better? I have 6-year-old twins who know better. When you, your boss and your friends decide to sabotage a company when you have information that Joe Investor couldn't possibly have, and you use that information to profit while Joe Investor loses 65 percent of his retirement fund...Cahn: You gonna charge my client or not?Sam: Depends.Cahn: He's not the one you want. There are bigger fish at Titanite.Sam: That's the point.

...

Naomi [to Erin]: Where did you get that pen?

That green pen.

Cory [removing the recording device]: So, am I done?Sam: Are you fucking kidding me? We own you.

Naomi: Are you tanking my IPO?Michael: Should I be?Naomi: Don't fuck with me, Michael. Don't fuck with me now. Did you leak this thing?Michael: Is it true?Naomi: It doesn't matter if it's fucking true! You know that. Once the rumors start...Michael: Hey, hey. Start your own rumors. Do you know how to play this game?Naomi: What the fuck is wrong with you? What did you do? Did you take my phone? Michael: Are you wearing a wire?Naomi: What do you think?Michael: Let's take our clothes off and find out.Naomi: Jesus. It's all just a big game to you, isn't it?Michael: What else is there?

...

Frank: So? Which bank? What, you never been called by a headhunter before? Don't you know that's why they call this place "the departure lounge"? I'm the only sucker who's been here more than a decade.Sam: So why do you stay?Frank: Uh...Well, it ain't for the paycheck. Just do me one favor before you talk to those guys, okay? You've been on a trading floor, right? No? Honey, you got to go there. You got to see what we're up against. You go, you breathe it in. The hunger of it, the pure American desire.

...

Naomi: What's gonna happen up there?Erin: I don't know. Hopefully the rumors will die down...Naomi: Did you leak this?Erin: I don't knowwhat you're talking about.Naomi: I know you were with Michael.Erin: I was not with Michael.Naomi: I don't give a shit about that, okay? I want to know why you sabotaged this. What the fuck did you do?Erin: I didn't do anything.Naomi: Yes, you did. You did, because you needed it, right?Erin: You don't know what I need.

...

Naomi: What is this?Bill: That is the...you said you wanted it.Naomi: How many chocolate chips are in my cookie?Bill: Um...Naomi: Did anyone teach you basic math? Count the fucking chips.Bill: Three.Naoimi: Three. Yes. And your cookies, I saw them, and they were oozing with chocolate and my cookie has three motherfucking chips?!!!

...

Bank official: I'm surprised you called back because you have a reputation for being a bit unorthodox.Sam: I get the job done. However I can.Bank official: This would be a big transition for you. Coming over into the corporate world.Sam: The thing is, I have a family and I'm looking forward to having a sense of stability...and to really be a...You know what? No. Um...That's not it. Uh...The truth is...l want to make some money. I could say something more nuanced about my dreams and aspirations, but that's the honest truth. lam so glad that we can sit here as women and talk about ambition. But money doesn't have to be a dirty word. We can like that too.

Remember that?

Reporter [voiceover over the closing credits]: Finally today tech company Cachet is back in the spotlight with another surge in share price this week, as the stock continues to rally following a disappointing IPO. Cachet, whose stock has been steadily climbing after that terrible debut earlier this year has by now made a lot of its investors very wealthy if they were able to hold on tight during that steep drop....We saw this with Facebook and Square where a stock rallies and the IPO fades into the distance as investors track the growth of the company over time. What seemed like a disaster at the initial offering could turn out to be just a speed bump on the road to enormous gains.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Clearly, until the proletariat rise up, seize the means of production and put the fucking banks out of business, it will be necessary for folks likes these to devise...alternatives. And you are with them or against them depending on where exactly you have come to situate yourself along that political spectrum.

And this of course is all tangled up in, among other things 1] dasein 2] conflicting goods and 3] political economy.

On the other hand, the folks here don't seem all that interested in those things at all. But then that doesn't supriase you, does it?

And they're a long, long way from being revolutionaries. The whole point of robbing the banks is to collect the $43,000 they need to pay off a reverse mortage on their deceased mother's ranch. Or something like that.

It seems they found oil on it.

This is, after all, just a tiny little story about tiny little people struggling to subsist in a great big world owned and operated by the great big few. And it all unfolds more or less out in the middle of nowhere.

On the other hand, maybe Donald Trump will eventually fix everything for everybody and all this class-struggle shit will become a thing of the past.

IMDb

This movie is set in Texas, but not a single scene was actually filmed there.

The film is dedicated to David John Mackenzie (1929-2015) and Ursula Sybil Mackenzie (1940-2015), the parents of director David Mackenzie. Both died while he was making this film.

The phrase "come hell or high water" typically means "do whatever needs to be done, no matter the circumstances". It also refers to the "hell or high water clause" in a contract, usually a lease, which states that the payments must continue regardless of any difficulties the paying party may encounter. Both definitions apply to different parts of the plot in this movie.

Toby: You got a gun on you, old man? Old Man: You're damn right I got a gun on me. Y'all going to steal my gun too? Toby: We ain't stealing from you. We're stealing from the bank.

...

Alberto: You hear about these bank robberies?Marcus: Why are you always dressed like me?Alberto:: This is our uniform.Marcus: We ain't got no uniform. You can wear whatever color shirt you choose. You just keep choosing mine.Alberto: Ranger regs say white, blue, or tan dress shirts. Stands to reason every once in a while we're gonna be dressed the same.

...

Man in pickup truck: Hey, what's going on?Marcus: Somebody robbed the bank this morning. If you see anyone looking a little sideways, give me a call.Man in pickup truck: Sideways don't wanna meet me. Find itself on the wrong end of a short rope.Marcus: Oh, well, that would simplify things for everyone but you.Man in pickup truck: Maybe, if you can find the tree.Marcus [after he drives away]: God, I love west Texas.

...

Marcus: I know their faces was covered, but could you tell their race? Black, white? Elsie: Their skin or their souls? Marcus: Let's leave their souls out of this for now.

...

Tanner: Maybe we should hit another branch. Toby: You know, you talk like we ain't gonna get away with this. Tanner: I never met nobody get away with anything... ever, you? Toby: Then why on the hell did you agree to do it? Tanner: Because you asked, little brother.

...

Alberto: I'm starving. Marcus: I doubt they serve pemmican. Alberto: You know I'm part Mexican, too. Marcus: Yeah, well, I'm gonna get to that when I'm through with the Indian insults, but it's gonna be a while. Bank Manager: You rangers are an odd bunch. Alberto: No, just him.

Tanner: You Comanche? Lords of the plains.Bear: Lords of nothing now. Do you know what Comanche means? It means enemies forever.Tanner: Enemies with who?Beatr: Everyone.Tanner: You know what that makes me?Bear: An enemy.Tanner: No. It makes me a Comanche.

...

Marcus [watching an evangelist preaching on TV]: We're not gonna watch this, are we?Alberto: Ain't you Christian?Marcus: Yeah. But I ain't stupid. Ain't you Indian? You're supposed to be burning sage and dancing around the bed whooping like a bee stung you.Alberto: I'm catholic.Marcus: Come on. Come on! I'd rather dance around a fire with a spear. I'd rather have you stab me with a spear than watch this. This son of a bitch, he wouldn't know god if he crawled up his pant leg and bit him on the pecker.

...

Tanner: How much you making on this deal?Billy: Not near as much as I'm risking.Tanner: Why you doin' it then?Billy: You know, they loaned the least they could. Just enough to keep your mama poor on a guaranteed return. Thought they could swipe her land for $25,000. That's just so arrogant, it makes my teeth hurt. To see you boys pay those bastards back with their own money? Well, if that ain't Texan, I don't know what is.

...

T-Bone Waitress: So, what don't you want?Marcus: Pardon?T-Bone Waitress: What don't you want?Marcus: Oh, well, uh, I think I'll just, uh...T-Bone Waitress: I've been working here for 44 years. Ain't nobody ever ordered nothing but a T-Bone steak and baked potato. Except one time, this asshole from New York ordered a trout, back in 1987. We ain't got no goddamned trout. T-bone steaks. So, either you don't want the corn on the cob, or you don't want the green beans. So, what don't you want?Marcus: I don't want green beans.Alberto: I don't want green beans either.

...

Toby: Mama died.Debbie: When?Toby: A few weeks ago.Debbie: Well, good riddance. No offense.

...

Marcus: People have made a living here for 150 years.Alberto: Well, people lived in caves for 150,000 years. But they don't do it no more.Marcus: Well, maybe your people did.Alberto: Your people did, too. A long time ago, your ancestors was the Indians, till someone came along and killed them, broke 'em down, made you into one of them. 150 years ago, all of this was my ancestors' land. Everything you could see. Everything you saw yesterday. Till the grandparents of these folks took it. And now, it's been taken from them. Except it ain't no army doing it.[he points over to the bank]Alberto: It's those sons of bitches right there.

...

Tanner: How you doing back there, little brother?Toby: You fucking killed them!Tanner: Those concealed carry permits sure complicate a bank robbery, don't they? It's not my fault it was payday.Toby: This has gone too far, Tan. No one was supposed to fucking die.Tannert: It was them or us, take your pick.

...

Marcus: There's just one?Ranger: Yep, just one.Marcus: There's supposed to be two of them.Ranger: Maybe the town folks got one.Marcus: Well, if they did, they got the smart one. This old boy is out of his mind.

...

Banker: I'll get that faxed over to your attorney by the end of the week.Toby: It is the end of the week. I wanna watch you do it.Banker: Well, it takes a little time to prepare.Toby: I got all day.

...

Marcus: Know who I am? I'm the man who killed your brother.Toby: I know. I also know you're retired and you're trespassing.

...

Marcus [to Toby]: How did you do it? Oh, never mind. I'll figure that out in time. Why? Why did you do it? I know why your brother, Tanner, did it. He robbed them banks because he liked it. He shot my partner 300 yards away because he liked it, it made him feel good. If I hadn't blown his shit for brains out, there'd be a new truck out front with jet skis, and whatever else he could think to buy. He'd spend it all just to give him an excuse to steal some more. But not you. There's nothing new around here, except them pumpjacks. Each one of them making you a month what you and your brother stole from all four banks combined. Help me understand, then. Help me understand why four people died so you could steal money that it don't seem you've spent, that it don't seem you need.

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Toby: I didn't kill your friend.Marcus: Yes, you did. By setting this thing in motion. You expect me to believe your dimwitted brother planned this? Oh, no. This was smart, this was you.

...

Toby: I've been poor my whole life. So were my parents, their parents before them. It's like a disease passing from generation to generation, becomes a sickness, that's what it is. Infects every person you know, but not my boys. Not anymore. This is theirs now. Now, I ain't never killed no one in my life, but if you want me to start with you, let's get on with it, old man. See if you can grab that pistol before I blast you off this porch.

...

Marcus [to Toby]: The things we do for our kids, huh?

...

Toby: I'm renting a little house in town. If you wanna stop by and finish this conversation, you're welcome anytime.Marcus: Oh, I'd like that. I'll be seeing you.Toby: Yeah. Soon, I hope. I'm ready to be done with this.Marcus: You'll never be done with it no matter what. It's gonna haunt you, son, for the rest of your days. But you won't be alone. It's gonna haunt me, too.Toby: If you stop by, maybe I'll give you peace.Marcus: Maybe. Maybe I'll give it to you.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Let's face it, as long as most of them are still illegal movies like this will be made.

And that is just fine for the multi-millionaires that manufacture them. And for the generally poor [or barely middle class] folks alienated by the bleak sterility of the "modern world" who use them. And that is just fine for those employed by the prison industrial complex. These folks thrive on dope arrests. Either in regard to the folks who use them or the folks who commit crimes against the rest of us in order to make that possible.

And the "war on drugs"? How long has that been going on?

Next up: The Wall.

The film is based -- more or less loosely? -- on actual events from the 1980s. And doesn't that speak volumes given the fact that our "drug problem" has only gotten worse. In Mexico for example. Among other things, some will argue, it is ripping that nation apart. And we all know who that dope is being made for, don't we?

And, in particular, the film explores the world of the undercover operative. And that is all about the extent to which you can effectively create an alternative self [personality, persona] such that your life itself literally depends on how well you can pull it off. In other words, look for Donnie Brasco. And then there is this part: who can you trust? Really trust? And the part where, in interracting with the "bad guys", you find yourself actually coming to...befriend them? At least on some level.

And then you stab them in the back.

But, let's face it, some of these guys do what they do because of all that shit. It has almost nothing to do with the money. It's more about keeping the adrenaline pumping..

Basically these guys -- the bad guys -- embody the nihlistic mentality of the sociopath: It's all about the money. It's all about "what's in it for me"? Go ahead, try to enlighten them regarding, for example, the philosophical parameters of ethics.

Finally, this part:

Title card: The CIA maintained secret accounts at BCCI. These accounts funded the Iran Contra War and the Afghan Freedom Fighters [the Taliban] war against Russia. Operastion C-Chase led to the collapse of the seventh largest bank in the world.

IMDb

In Breaking Bad, the characters of Hank and Walt Jr. both mention a book written by the real Robert Mazur who actor Bryan Cranston plays in this movie.

During an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015), host Colbert asked star Bryan Cranston if he thinks he'll get into heaven. Cranston answered: "Not after what I did in Tampa" referencing unspecified circumstances during the shooting of this film in that city.

Working undercover for two years, Robert Mazur struggled to remain cool in the face of life and death situations. "From the outside, it probably looked like I was medicated, but inside my head, fireworks were going off," he said. During one Cartel meeting, Mazur remembered, "Rudy [Armbrecht] told me if I ever turned on them, there wasn't a hole deep enough on this planet that I could hide in. I knew the man he used to work for, Gerardo Moncada, was tortured to death. I also knew that if I acted scared, these criminals have a sixth sense. They can smell fear."

Corrupt banking practices have metastasized over the ensuing decades since Robert Mazur's 1980s mission, as evidenced by the recent "Panama Papers" leak. Dating back to the 1970s, the secret files document how major international banks continue to hide money in more than two hundred secret off-shore shell companies, without questioning the sources of their clients' income. International banks including BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered Bank, Lloyd's, ING, ABN Amro, Credit Suisse, Barclays, RBS, HSBC, UBS, and Wachovia / Wells Fargo have all paid fines for failing to report suspicious money transfers. "We lack the political will to do anything about it," Mazur observed.

During Robert Mazur's real life training with the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), before he joined the U.S. Customs Office of Enforcement, Mazur learned an invaluable lesson about creating an undercover alias. "I'll never forget when an IRS special agent told me 'Do as much as you can personally to build your own identity and do not rely on the government'." By way of illustration, Robert Mazur said: "If you let someone in the government get you a credit card, there's going to be a red flag in a file somewhere at American Express saying 'If this card becomes overdrawn, contact Special Agent so and so.' The people I infiltrated had very high-level contacts. They've bought presidents of countries. It would be easy for them to get somebody in charge of American Express to give them information."

Robert Mazur (played in the film by Bryan Cranston) credits Dominic (portrayed in the movie by Joseph Gilgun), the mob enforcer posing as his chauffeur, with invaluable fashion tips. "Dominic told me where to buy my clothes," said Mazur, who paid for the expensive suits out of his own pocket. "The government does not outfit you with new clothes. As a Customs Agent there was no way I would have paid that kind of money for a couple of suits, but this stuff helped keep me alive."

Waitress: Hey, you know, the last guy that paid me, he paid me with a gram.Robert: A gram? Jesus...Waitress: A gram. This guy, he told me he didn't carry money anymore because money was old-fashioned. He said that money was done. And that what we needed was a new...Oh, fuck, what's that word?Robert: A new what?Waitress: Like a new...Like a, you know... Come on.Robert: Oh, I know. No, I know what you mean.[he hands her a packet of dope]Robert: What we need is a new currency.

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Vicky: So, Bobby, tell me. How much you get? Come on.Robert: Aunt Vicky, we have been through this. I work for the government.Vicky: You don't get a piece of the action?Robert: No. A piece of the action?Vicky: What, 10, 20%?Robert: No, not a dime.Vicky: Ah... And they call us criminals.

Abreu: I got this money broker, Gonzalo Mora Jr., who can connect us with some...Robert: Okay, let me guess, you have a Colombian snitch who gave you that name?Abreu: They prefer to be called informants...Robert: I know what they prefer to be called. How much is you offer?Abreu: 250K. Robert: $250,000 for...Abreu: What do you care? Is it coming out of your pocket? Yeah, nobody said the war on drugs was gonna be cheap, bro.Robert: These people who sell information, they walk on the dirty side of the street. And then they cross over to the side that's been swept. But their shoes always stay muddy.Abreu: Is that Shakespeare?

...

Robert: Steve, I've been thinking. I think that we've been doing this backwards. We've been following the drugs to get to the bad guys. What if we chase the money to get to the bad guys? The real power up at the top.

In other words, become the money launderers.

Robert: Look, Dom. I don't care who you work for right now. I really don't. I'm not here for that.Dominic: Right, so what do you want, Bob?Robert: When you cooperated before, it led to drugs off the street, and a lot of punks right here in this shithole that you call your home.Dominic: Sorry, Bobby, I can't rat.Roberty: I'm not asking you to rat.Dominic: Can't do it.Robert: I'm asking you to just act.Dominic: Like fucking what?Robert: Like you. Just be yourself. I need you.

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Robert: You Okay?Evelyn [wife]: Promise me this is the last one.Robert: I promise.Evelyn: Good.

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Laundering the money:Robert: My financial structure is already in place. So, you invest with me and a portion of your money stays put while the majority of your cash gets filtered through my businesses so that you are able to do with it what you please.Mora: We don't park cash. That isn't the way we do business.Robert: Mr. Mora, with all due respect, it's the way I do business. Now, I've checked your transactions. Large sums to companies like Southern Air Transport, that raises the Feds' antennae. It looks like one big money laundering machine. And that's not what you want. That's not bueno. However, smaller sums with more frequent deposits through my companies fly right under the radar of the Feds. You know why? Because all of my companies are legitimate. Capisce? I cannot allow my businesses and your money to be compromised.

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Abreu: A fiance, Bob? Huh? Are you kidding me? A fucking fi-an-ce.Robert: I'm a married man.Abreu: Bob, you're undercover. You gotta do whatever the fuck you gotta do, man. You should have fucked that stripper, fucking do a line of coke, anything to stay alive, man. You got the best fucking job in the world. I can't believe I have to talk you into this shit. Bob, I know these people, man. You gotta play with them, you gotta drink with them, you gotta fuck with them. That's the way you get their trust.Robert: Hey, I'm alive, aren't I?Abreu: Oh, my God, you're a piece of work, Bob. You're a fucking piece of work. I mean, why are you even doing this, Bob? Why do you even bother? I mean, I heard about the retirement they offered you. You, he wife, and kids, you guys could be playing cricket on a yacht, eating early...Whatever it is that fucking white people do when you retire.Robert: Why are you doing this?Abreu: Man, because I love this shit. That's why, baby. It's my fucking drug of choice. Let me tell you something, nobody, nobody does it better than me. So, listen to me sometimes, will you?

...

Dominic: Let me remind you of something, Bobby, all right. You're a fucking poser, and so are you Emir. And that faggot out there...You fuck this up, he'll kill you, he'll kill your fucking wife, and your two kids. And do the same to this asshole here, and then he's gonna kill me. You understand? You understand?!Robert: Yeah.

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Ian [BCCI CEO... after being told Robert's clients product is cocaine]: Mr. Bilgrami and Mr. Awan have taken good care of you?Robert: Yes, yes. Excellent.Ian: Good. Because BCCI is a reputable bank.Robert: Look, I assure you...Ian: No, no. No assurances from you. Only from us. Please, take a seat. We buy gold or diamonds, keep them in our secure vaults or we could send your money to Paris or our headquarters in London, other banks around the globe, deposit it, wire transfer to Panama. We like to be nimble with our clients' cash. How does that sound?Robert: Sounds like I came to the right bank.

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Abreu: Okay, here we go. Let's play this newlywed game. All right, Kathy, what do you know about your handsome fiance Bob? Favorite drink?Kathy [his new "fiancé"]: He's a whiskey kind of guy.Robert: And she's a Manhattan girl.Abreu: All right, that was too damn easy. All right. Food she hates?Robert: Uh... Yogurt.Kathy: No. I love yogurt.Robert: I thought you said you hated yogurt?Kathy: I hate sour cream. And mayonnaise.Robert: Sour cream and mayonnaise. Noted.

...

Evelyn: That was the most degrading, vicious, disgusting thing I have ever seen you do.Robert: I know. I'm sorry. I never wanted you to see that.

It was appalling. But, really, what choice did he have?

Robert: My paperwork for Southern Air Transport has to be in place. In order to do that we need to make it look like I manage your money.Barry: Listen, friend, I never fuck on the first date. Walmart on every block. Smack dab in milk and honey land. America the beautiful. Only we don't get to the see the filth on the other side of the store. The sewage of civilization. Hell, man, if it wasn't for the churches,this whole fucking place would just die. You know, the Good Book? It says, "Don't steal, don't lie." Well, who's that written for? You know, we pray for a good clean life, a list of do's or don'ts, and we act like animals. All of us. And Nancy Reagan with her holier-than-thou "just say no to drugs" bullshit. Ronny, you know, he should've stayed the Gipper. He's nothing but a two-faced drug pusher.

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Roberto [to Robert]: ...got to tell you, I would have been a chef, but America put me in this business. It's their fault I'm not wearing an apron, sweating my balls off in some kitchen somewhere. But no demand, no supply. And there are a lot of folks with noses. God gave us free will, so who am I to stand in the way of someone who wants to indulge in self-destructive behavior. The politicians think it's a drug war, shoot them up, Dirty Harry, but I say it's a business like any other. Profits up, people come, profits down, they leave, by any means necessary. The only difference is, in my business, nothing good ever comes in the absence of trust.

...

Tom Brokaw [on TV]: He used to smuggle drugs. Then he got caught and he became one of the government's most valuable informants in the war against cocaine. But Barry Seal's enemies caught up with him and killed him. Tonight, three men are in custody. NBC's Brian Ross reports that Seal was about to testify for the government once again. Authorities believe machine-gun killing of top drug informant Barry Seal was ordered by drug bosses in Medellin, Colombia, who sent five men to kill Seal.

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Roberto: All of my cash, this economic renaissance, this new Miami. The economy is addicted to drugs. You know who's the biggest money launderer in the US?Robert: Well, I thought it was me. No?Roberto: No. Your Federal Reserve Bank. It's called the anonymous window. They accept pallet loads of cash that used to be drug pesos, hundreds of millions of dollars from my country's central bank, no questions asked. If your government didn't have my dirty money, your economy would collapse. You know, Bob, I think I'm going to introduce you to Pablo.

Dominic [to Robert]: These people are fucking nuts. I know I sound like a broken record, but I fucking heard it and I've seen it. You think you understand. You fucking don't. These people are not fucking cops, Bobby, all right? They will make you die for days and they've got fucking good at it. You know what? They cut off your fingers. They cut off your toes. They inject you with that fucking adrenalin shit so you don't pass out before any of that. Man, they cut open your fucking eyes so you can't shut them, and then they're gonna bring in your little fucking family. They'll cut your son's head off with a cheese wire. They'll do the same to your little girl. And then, they'll cut your wife's tits off right in front of you and they won't feel a fucking thing. Last but not least, they're gonna cut your fucking head off and send it to your buddies down at Customs.

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Evelyn [to Robert]: You could have retired, couldn't you? You made a choice. And this is mine.

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Roberto: I don't wanna talk about business on such a beautiful day, but I must have that money.Robert: Escobar sent me his calling card. A bloody coffin.Roberto: I apologize for my associate's indiscretion, but as your friend, I beg you to get him his money. Without it, he is an animal.Robert: And I'm asking you to tell Don Chepe to deliver a message to Escobar that I do not do business under threat.Roberto: Well, at this point, unfortunately, neither you nor I are in a position to dictate terms to Don Pablo.

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Ian: I was admiring your briefcase. May I have a look?Robert: Of course.Ian: Renwick.Robert: Renwick.Ian: I wouldn't mind one of these. Is it expensive?Robert: Priceless.

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Ospina: Bankers, all they are is crooked men with capes. Only they have suits, like Superman. Except, they're maybe like the Joker. They are crooked thieves with crooked cocks. Their penises are crooked. I'm gonna come back to this table, and when I come back, I'm gonna be completely invisible.Robert: Ospina. That's enough.Ospina: You broke my heart, Bob.

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Kathy: What did Ospina do?Robert: He embarrassed them.

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Kathy: Who was that young guy?Robert: That was Don Chepe. More importantly, the other man is Pablo Escobar.Kathy: You gotta be fucking kidding me.

...

Robert: What are you doing here?Roberto: When the heat is on, you get out of the fire. Except, I'm a chef, I'm always in the fire. Besides, you're not talking to Roberto Alcaino. I am now Fernando Alvarez. Wanna see my Argentinian passport?Robert: Roberto, I'm glad you're here. But there is a part of me that wishes you hadn't taken that risk.Roberto: Without family or friends, what kind of world would this be? There would be no reason to be alive.

...

Gloria: You traitors! You will fucking regret this! You hear me! You'll live to regret this!Robert: Take them away.Gloria: You will regret this!!

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Von Rabb [being interviewed by a reporter]: Well, the drug dealers have said that, your children are the business of their future. America needs to stop this scourge. And these arrests are a big step in that direction.

...

Title card: Robert Mazur testified in trials that took place in New York, Tampa and London. More than 100 bankers and drug traffickers were criminally charged.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

I'm trying to imagine a particular reaction. The reaction of those most brutally afflicted by the Final Solution. Their reaction to two arguments. The first admits that the Holocaust occurred but then justifies it. The second denies that the Holocaust had ever happened at all.

Which would likely be more infuriating?

In this film [based on the true story] the argument revolves around denial. And denial is a psychological defense mechanism. And they work to prop up a sense of reality that for whatever reason becomes vital for any particular one of us. We latch on to a way of understanding the world around us and nothing is allowed to change that. Then it becomes a matter of whether or not others are able to provide the evidence necessary to establish that in fact something did happen. Even if you do deny it.

But then the path must inevitably shift to exploring what is buried in the past -- the part about dasein -- that caused someone to embrace a frame of mind that is not in sync with reality. A frame of mind entirely wedded to, for example, a particular set of political prejudices instead.

Of course in the end it all revolves around establishing an outcome that can be described as "just". But, in doing that here, it explores in turn the difference between American and English jurisprudence. Which then is the "better way" to establish the truth?

Still, in a "court of law", however you might construe an issue morally, politically or philosophically what counts [at least in the text books] is that which you are able to establish as in fact true. Did the Holocaust actually happen? In fact it did.

IMDb

All the dialogue in the courtroom scenes is taken verbatim from the trial records.

Rachel Weisz and a small film crew were given permission to film at Auschwitz Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in Poland where almost one million Jews died.

Deborah [to her class]: Holocaust denial rests on four basic assertions. Number one. That there was never any systematic or organized attempt by the Nazis to kill all of Europe's Jews. Number two. That the numbers are far fewer than five or six million. Number three. That there were no gas chambers or specially built extermination facilities. Number four. That the Holocaust is therefore a myth invented by Jews to get themselves financial compensation and to further the fortunes of the State of Israel.

...

Deborah: How do we know the Holocaust happened? Seriously. I'm asking. How do we prove it?Student: Photographic evidence?Deborah: Not one person in this room or outside it has ever seen a photograph of a Jew inside a gas chamber. You know why? Because the Germans made sure that none were ever taken. So how do we know? How do we know that so many were murdered? So what's the proof? Where's the proof? How strong is it?

...

Deborah [to the audience]: Whatever the reasons that people become deniers, when you look closely, they often have an agenda which they won't admit to. So denial is a pick to undo the lock to open the door to something else.

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Audience member: Somebody told me you don't debate with people who say the Holocaust didn't happen.Deborah: Uh, that is correct. Like I don't debate with people who say Elvis is alive.[audience laughs]Audience member: Talking to people you don't agree with, that's democracy, isn't it? It's cowardly not to talk to them.Deborah: Are you calling me a coward?Audience member: Well...Deborah: No, no, listen. I... I don't see it that way. You can have opinions about the Holocaust. You can argue about why it happened and how it happened. But what I won't do is meet with anyone, anyone, who says it didn't happen. Because the Holocaust happened. It happened. And that isn't opinion. That's fact. And I won't debate fact.

...

Irving [on TV]: According to the evidence I've seen, there were no gas chambers anywhere at Auschwitz. I'm dealing with Auschwitz because it's the capital ship of the whole Holocaust campaign. Now if Auschwitz sinks, and it is, believe me, a very leaky vessel indeed, then the whole Holocaust campaign is in doubt.

...

Anthony: Deborah, I have to warn you that there's a reason why he's bringing the case in London.Deborah: I wondered about that.Anthony: It's to his advantage. Over here in America, uh, if you're accused of defaming someone, then it's up to them to prove that what you said is untrue. In the UK, the reverse is true.Deborah: Wait. I have to prove what I said was true?Anthony: Mmm. Correct. Deborah: Yes, but I'm the innocent party. A man accuses you of something and it's your job to prove he's wrong? It's against natural justice. In the US there's a presumption of innocence.Anthony: Yeah, not in the UK.

...

Anthony: Irving wants to be the brilliant maverick, the provocateur who comes along and reinvents the Second World War. But he also wants respect, the respect of his colleagues in the club. England's a club, Deborah, and he wants to join.Deborah: But he's an anti-Semite.Anthony: You'd be amazed how many military historians see that as just a detail. They see him as a serious historian who happens to see things from Hitler's point of view.

...

Deborah: Wait a minute. What do you mean, that the survivors won't appear?Anthony: No, no, no. No, we don't want them to.Deborah: You don't want their testimony?Anthony: No. Under no circumstances.Deborah: Why not? Why the hell not?Anthony: Because even to let survivors appear would be to legitimize his right to question them.

...

Deborah: Can I say something before you go any further with this strategy?Anthony: Yes, please do.Deborah: You once said to me that this trial might have implications for the whole of the Jewish people. Now you're saying you won't allow the Jews to speak?James: Right, I'll explain the thinking just so you understand the thinking.Deborah: Yes, please, I would love to understand the thinking.Anthony: We believe that Irving is planning on being what we call a litigant in person. He plans to conduct his own case.Deborah: What do you mean? He's not hiring lawyers?James: No. No, it'll be just him.Anthony: Imagine that. David Irving, international Holocaust denier, finally getting his hands on a survivor. Imagine it. The hurt. The damage. The insult. It's unthinkable. He's not gonna have that. I won't allow it. I won't allow that to happen.

...

Anthony: Richard will be your leading counsel. I've explained to Deborah the difference between barrister and solicitor.Richard: Our legal system seems forbidding but it works, I think.Deborah: If your legal system worked, I wouldn't be in this mess. I don't mind Dickensian, it's Kafkaesque I'm worried about.

...

Deborah: Why are we talking about Leuchter? I mean, he's really not worth the paper he's written on.Richard: Well, so you say. Now say why.Deborah: I'll tell you why. Because of course there was a higher concentration in here. It takes 20 times more cyanide to kill lice than it does human beings. Twenty times! Leuchter just didn't know that.Richard: Oh, this whole thing is infuriating. Why has there not been a proper scientific study of this whole site? By reputable scientists? Fifty years since the fact? I mean, it's ridiculous. Where's the proof? Where's the evidence?

...

Richard: Deborah, you mustn't characterize me as being without feelings. I have feelings.Deborah: What did you feel today?Richard: Oh. Shame. I have this terrible fear that if I'd have been ordered to do some of the things we saw today that...That I would have agreed. Out of weakness.Deborah: Well, that is honest of you to say so.Richard: Well, that's how it is. The world is full of cowards and I've always hadthis nervous feeling that...That I was one of them. There's this line from Goethe, "Der Fiege droht nur, wo er sicher ist." It means, "The coward only threatens when he feels secure."

...

Deborah: It was confusing. It was like he already knew all of our questions.Anthony: Well, yes, of course he does. We sent them to him.Deborah: What? You sent him our questions in advance? What... Why would you give away our strategy?Anthny: Deborah, there is no strategy. We're gonna box him in with the truth.

...

Woman [Holocaust survivor]: Excuse me. Miss Lipstadt?Deborah: Yes, that's me.Woman: May I speak to you? I would like you to come and meet some of my friends. Friends with something in common.[she reveals the tattoo on her arm]Deborah: Would you like to sit?Woman: We want to know, how can you let this happen? None of us have been called. We have to be heard. A trial of the Holocaust and no witnesses? How can that be right? There is a whole group of us. Deborah, we have to testify. We have to. On behalf of the others. For the dead.Deborah: I make you a promise. The voice of suffering will be heard. I promise you that.

...

Anthony: Whatever you say, the survivors are not on trial. That's the end of it. They confuse the issue.Deborah: Oh, so you can look a survivor in the face and you can tell her she's not allowed to speak? You can do that? Because I can't. I can't do it.Anthony: Deborah, these people have been through hell. I understand that. After all these years, they haven't been able to process the experience. I understand that, too. But a trial, I'm afraid, is not therapy. It's not my job to give emotional satisfaction to a whole group of people who can never forget what happened to them.Deborah: You think they wanna testify for themselves? It's not for themselves they wanna testify. They wanna give voice to the ones that didn't make it. To their families, their friends. Anthony, I... I promised that their voice would be heard. I promised.Anthony: Well, then you'd better go back out there and break your promise.

...

Deborah: So Irving got what he came for. You know, he wanted headlines, he got 'em. "No holes, no Holocaust!" He wanted a catchy phrase, he's got it. It's gonna... It's gonna spread like a virus. Don't you see what he's doing? He's making it respectable to saythat there are two points of view. People are gonna see the news now and they're gonna think, "Oh, okay. Some people think there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, and, oh, this is interesting, some people don't.Anthony: Yes, but Deborah, you know why he chose Auschwitz in the first place.Deborah: Why he chose Auschwitz? Because everybody heard of it. Because of its emotional impact.Anthony: No.Deborah: Because. I don't know. What are you getting at?Anthony: Because it wasn't built as an extermination camp. It was built as a labor camp.Deborah: I know that.James: Then it was modified.Deborah: Yes, I know that.Anthony: That's why he's going after it. It's a battering ram into a much bigger subject. Auschwitz is at the very center of Holocaust belief, so Auschwitz is at the very center of Holocaust denial. Think about it logically. It doesn't make any sense at all what he says. "No holes, no Holocaust." He seizes one tiny fact and because that can't be physically proved, he says, "Oh, well, then that throws everything into doubt. The Nazis didn't do any murdering. They didn't do any murdering at all."Deborah: I know that. I wrote a whole book about it.

...

Deborah: What you're not getting, what you're ignoring, is that we know what happened at Auschwitz because there were people there who actually saw it.Anthony: Oh, Deborah, Deborah.Deborah: Yes, yes! With their own eyes. They're called survivors. Anthony: Yes. And put survivors on the stand and Irving will humiliate them. Remember the Zundel trial. Remember the Exodus trial. They were torn apart. Because survivors don't remember. Not every detail. They forget something. They say a door was on the left,when actually it was on the right, and then, wham! Irving's in. "You see? They're liars, you can't trust anything they say."

...

Richard: Now, if the corpses were also gassed there, then, as I understand it, they were then sent to be incinerated?Irving: Yes. Richard: What is the point in gassing a corpse that is about to be burnt?Irving: I'm not sure, saying this off the top of my head, Mr. Rampton. I'm not a Holocaust historian, I'm a Hitler historian.Richard: Then why don't you keep your mouth shut about the Holocaust? The truth is, as usual, Mr. Irving, you jump in off the board spouting whatever rubbish comes into your head in order to avoid the obvious conclusion. This is not because you're a rotten historian. It's because you're a bent one, as well.

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Deborah: I have never trusted anyone to do anything on my behalf since I was a child. And all I have is my voice and my conscience and I have to listen to it.Richard: Your conscience?Deborah: Yes!Richard: Yes, they're a strange thing consciences. Trouble is, what feels best isn't necessarily what works best. Deborah: Do you have any idea how hard it is to hand over your conscience to somebody else? This is everything I thought I would never do.

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Richard: You sued because you said that we had called you a racist and an extremist.Irving: Yes, but I'm not a racist.Richard: Mr. Irving, look at the words on the page.

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Judge Gray: My question is this, if somebody is anti-Semitic, anti-Semitic and extremist, he is perfectly capable of being honestly anti-Semitic, yes? He's holding those views and expressing those views because they are indeed his views?Richard: Well, yes.Judge Gray: And so it seems to me, if it comes down to it, that the anti-Semitism is a completely separate allegation and has precious little bearing on your broader charge that he has manipulated the data?Richard: No, no, my Lord. No. The whole endeavor of the defense has been to prove that the two are connected.Judge Gray: But he might believe what he is saying. That is the point. That is why it is so important.Richard: My Lord, if we know that Mr. Irving is an anti-Semite, and if we know there is no historical justification for Holocaust denial, then surely it is no great stretch to see that the two are connected.Judge Gray [after thinking about it]: Yes. Thank you. Carry on. Deborah: What the fuck just happened? Anthony, what just happened?

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Libby: Well? How was it?Deborah: I'll tell you what happened at the end. We summed up. Irving summed up.Libby: And?Deborah: And everyone kept saying, this is all great, everything's gonna be fine. And then suddenly this judge, this unbelievable character from Masterpiece Theatre...Anyway, at the last minute, he looked up and he said, "Well, you know, maybe Irving actually believes it. He's an anti-Semite and he believes it. You can't accuse someone of lying if they genuinely believe what they're saying."Libby: That's crazy. That's insane.Deborah: And that's when I thought, "I've been suckered." I stared at this judge for eight weeks and I thought I was looking at wisdom, but maybe I was just looking at prejudice.

...

Deborah [to her class]: When people glibly say, "Oh, if I'd have been in Germany, I would never have collaborated, I'd have resisted," I just wanna laugh. Do you have any idea how dangerous and difficult it was? Standing up to the enemy was arduous and uncertain and exhausting. But they had to do it. Only in hindsight do things get called heroic. At the time you're just afraid. Afraid of how things will turn out.

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Judge Gray: It appears to me that the correct and inevitable inference must be that the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs, even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence. In the result, therefore, the defense of justification, succeeds. The court finds for the defendants.

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Deborah: Now, some people are saying that the result of this trial will threaten free speech. I don't accept that. I'm not attacking free speech. On the contrary, I've been defending it against someone who wanted to abuse it. Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Behind the opening credits are images that spell out rather clearly just how sex drenched the modern world has become. At least around our neck of the woods. Sex sells. Right, Mr. Capitalist?

This one is rated R. R for Ridiculous?

For some no doubt.

Imagine the idea that sex with yourself may well be preferable to sex with another human being. That masturbation may well be preferable to sex with someone that you love. With someone, in other words, able to embed the act of sex itself into a complex emotional bond that encompasses all manner of human experience.

On the other hand, in this day age there are no doubt thousands of folks [men for example] who are more than willing to forego the ideal in order to get their rocks off without a single string attached.

To wit: The sexual tension builds, you wallow in pornography, come and then go about the business of living. Without all the bullshit [obligations, responsibilities] that seem to tag along with an actual relationship.

Maybe. But then there's this guy:

Jon Martello objectifies everything in his life: his apartment, his car, his family, his church, and, of course, women.

Jon: For the next few minutes all the bullshit fades away and the only thing in the world is those tits...dat ass...the blowjob...the cowboy, the doggie, the money shot and that's it. I don't gotta say anything, I don't gotta do anything. I just fucking lose myself.

He is the very embodiment of the Me! Me!Me! generation. And, let's face it, of late that's practically all of them.

Still, theoretically, there must be a woman out there who can sweep him off his feet. A woman who can take him away from all that. Of course it helps if she looks like Scarlett Johansson.

I'm presumming of course that this was all done tongue in cheek. But, sure, if you count Esther, maybe not. With her it becomes an entirely different movie. For better or for worse.

Be warned: Explicit dialogue ahead.

IMDb

Joseph Gordon-Levitt wrote the part specifically for Scarlett Johansson and was really happy when Johansson agreed to star in the movie.

The sound effect used when Jon throws tissues into the garbage after watching porn is the same sound used when files are dragged to the 'trash' utility on a Mac, the computer used by Jon.

Jon [voiceover]: Yo, not gonna lie. This sound gets me hard as a fucking rock. But I don't like to go too fast right off the bat. I'd rather work my way into it, nice and easy. So I'll start off with some stills. Then, once I'm getting into it, I start looking for a video. I never actually touch my cock till I find the right clip. Then, once I do goodbye. For the next few minutes all the bullshit fades away and the only thing in the world is those tits... dat ass... the blowjob... the cowboy, the doggie, the money shot and that's it, I don't gotta say anything, I don't gotta do anything. I just fucking lose myself.

Jon [voiceover]: This is what I'm saying. Real pussy's all good. But I'm sorry. It's not as good as porn. Tits? Great. Ass? Great. Blowjob? Sure, it's fucking fantastic in person...if she'll do it. But in real life, if you wanna get head, you gotta give head. I know, some geys love eating pussy, But the thing about those guys is, they're fucking crazy. Don't get me wrong, I like a good pussy-eating clip. But, from down here, there's nothing good about this.

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Jon [voiceover]: Now, when it comes to the actual fucking...First of all, condoms are terrible. They just are. But you gotta wear one, 'cause, unlike porn, real pussy can kill you.

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Jon: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession. Sice last Sunday I had sexual relations out of wedlock two times. I also watched pornographic videos and masturbated seventeen times. For these, and all the sins in my life, I am sorry. Priest: Ten Lord's Prayers and ten Hail Marys.Jon: Thank you, Father.Priest: Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.Jon: Amen.

Is that how it really works?

Bobby [on Facebook]: That's her? Jon: That's definitely her! Bobby: She's a dime! Jon: This girl's more than a dime, bro. Bobby: There's no such thing. There's a scale from 1-10. Jon: I'm just saying... Bobby: Oh my god, what are you in love with her already? Jon: Fuck you!

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Jon [at the computer]: I'm in love with Barbara. I am. And tonight, I finally got to fuck her. But I'm sorry to say, it's still not as good as porn. Tits? Best ever. Ass? Best ever. Blowjob? Shit. Good luck. A girl that hot? She doesn't have to give head. For her, she just wants to go from kissing, to naked kissing, to fucking. Or, you know, making love. And when I say "making love," I mean missionary fucking.

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Jon [after Barbara catches him watching porn]: But, baby, I'm telling you...I'm telling you, that thing I was watching was just a joke! Some dumb-ass buddy of mine sent it to me as a joke. Come on! You think I'm the kind of guy that watches porn?Barbara: No, you didn't seem like that type.Jon: Right. 'Cause fucking losers watch porn, guys that can't get laid.Barbara: Well, no. My friends' boyfriends are watching porno on the Internet all the time, it's fucking disgusting.Jon: It's stupid is what that is. Why would they watch porn when they can get with a real girl?

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Jon: You never been in love, so you don't know what you're talking about.Bobby: Hold up. Wait a minute. In love?Jon: When you really love a girl, there's a lot that goes into it.Bobby: You're saying you love her?Jon: Of course I love her. I've been in love with this girl since the first time I saw her. Why would I wanna go out and try to pull randoms? None of 'em are gonna look as good as my girl, none of 'em are gonna fuck me as good as my girl....I'm telling you guys something. You be a man, you do the right thing, you find the right girl and you treat her the right way? Watch what happens. Best sex of your life.

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Barbara: Movies and porn are different, Jon. They give awards for movies. Jon: And they give awards for porn too.

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Jon [voiceover after Barbara leaves him]: So up until now, my record was ten in one day. And for a long time, I thought I'd never beat that. But today...I hit 11. And you know, when I have great fucking days like this, it just reminds me how much I love being single. I do what I want, when I want... It just feels good, like... like I got my own life back. I mean, you think I could have hit 11 when I was with Barbara? No! Definitely not.

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Jon: Wanna know what happened? I'll tell you what happened. She snooped around on my computer, she found out I watch porn. I told her every fucking guy watches porn, she didn't believe me. She acted like I was cheating on her or something, which I wasn't. So... we broke up. And you know what? I'm glad we did.Esther: Just porn?Jon: Yeah.Esther: No, I don't buy it.Jon: I'm telling you. That's all.

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Esther: OK. One more question, then I'll drive you back. You ever jerk off without porn?Jon: What do you mean?

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Jon [voiceover]: I'm not like a junkie. Come on, that's stupid. It's porn, it's not fucking heroin. I knew a few guys in high school who actually smoked crack, like all the time. That's like a junkie. They couldn't stop. I could stop if I wanted to. I could.

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Esther [to Jon]: Didn't you tell me last week that you like porn better than real sex? Well, honey, I'm gonna be honest with you, 'cause it seems like that's what you want. Look, the way you have sex, it's like totally one-sided. It's like I'm not even there. I mean, look, it's fine with me. I'm not complaining. It just so happens that meaningless sex is something that I want in my life now, but you said that you wanna lose yourself in sex. If you wanna lose yourself, you have to lose yourself in another person. And she has to lose herself in you. It's a two-way thing.

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Jon [in the Confessional]: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession.Priest: Tell me your sins.Jon: First of all, I lied to you before. I told you that, uh... Well, actually, I don't know if it was you. Something I've always kinda wondered is, is it the same guy I'm talking to every week or there's a few of you and you switch off, or... how does that all work?

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Priest: Ten Lord's Prayers and ten Hail Marys.Jon: Really? Same thing, no difference?Priest: Through the ministry of the Church, may God give you...Jon: Wait! Father, I'm really sorry, but could you just tell me how you got to those numbers, please? 'Cause I... I really thought there was gonna be a difference this week.Priest: Have faith, my son.

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Barbara: When a real man loves a woman, he doesn't mind doing things for her. He'll do anything for her.Jon: Yeah, but don't you think that sounds a little bit one-sided?Barbara: No, I don't. But that's why you like to watch those whores in those videos, because you don't gotta do anything for them, right?

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Jon [voiceover of Esther]: This fuckin' lady! Now I don't usually like it when a girl looks me right in the eye, and this girl does that a lot. But I don't know what it is about her, when she does it, I don't mind. I just look right back at her, and pretty soon, I'm hard as a fuckin' rock. It's like she knows what I'm thinkin', or I know what she's thinkin'. I don't know, it's a two-way thing. Fuckin' love it! And I don't mean love like, oh I love her or wanna marry her, definitely not thinkin' about all that shit. And she's not either... she can't. I guess I just mean love like, you know like... we're making love. And while we're doing it, all the bullshit does fade away, and it's just me and her right there, and yeah I do lose myself in her. And I can tell she's losing herself in me. And we're just fuckin'... lost together.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

You are raised in Nazi Germany to believe certain things about the Jews. First and foremost that they are the enemy. Now the war is over. Your Nazi parents have more or less abandoned you and your four younger siblings. You must make your way through the Black Forest to your grandmother's house. But along the way you encounter the sort of "contingency, chance and change" that can have a profound impact on the lives of anyone.

But when the lives are embedded in an extraordinary context [WWII and the Holocaust] the repercussions can be all that much more extraordinary in turn.

The film basically revolves around a set of circumstances and points of view. It is a "coming of age" film that reminds us of just how much everything does depend on where and when and how you happen to come of age as a particular individual. And here [clearly] one size does not fit all.

Try to imagine yourself watching the movie as someone with no real understanding of the historical context. You are watching these people interact and are trying to figure out why they say and do the things that they do.

And then by the end you will have had to come up with a frame of mind enabling you to judge them.

In any event, at any particular point in time, you are either on the losing end or the winning end of history. It's just that some are necessarily more innocent than others. Children for example.

And then there is Lore. Not quite a child anymore but not quite an adult. She embraces the Fuhrer as she has been taught. But it is only at the rudimentary stage. She is considerably less adoring of him by the end of the film. But not in the manner in which some might imagine.

IMDb

Despite spending time living in Berlin and directing the movie where the actors performed completely in German, director Cate Shortland doesn't speak the language.

Neighbor: Is your mama still here?Lore: Yes, of course.Nerighbor: We thought they had taken her to prison.

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Lore: Are you going to prison?Mutti: You mustn't worry. It is a camp.Lore: Yes.Mutti: It is not a prison. Prison is for criminals.

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Lore: You're not coming back are you?Mutti: You must remember who you are.

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Old woman [to Lore, looking at portrait of Hitler]: We broke his heart, he loved us so much. And the lies. Those Americans. With their photographs. Actors. The Americans paid all of them.

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American soldier: Who are you?Thomas [who is Jewish...or is he?]: l'm their brother.Soldier: Hey, you! You. Your name?Liesel: Liesel.Soldier: Liesel? Who is this, Liesel? Who is this?Liesel: Our brother.Thomas: We've just been to Ansbach, looking for food, and have been walking.Soldier: Where are their papers?Thomas: Lost. We lost them in Buchenwald. We were moved to Buchenwald from Auschwitz, and we were there until liberation.

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Lore [to Thomas]: I know what you are. You're a Jew. I saw it on your papers. I don't want you touching the children, do you understand me?

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Liesel: Thomas says we're not allowed in Hamburg. He said it's over the border. Germany is all broken up. There's a Russian zone, a British zone, a French zone. We're in the American one.Lore: Hamburg is in Germany.Liesel: Thomas says there isn't a Germany anymore.

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Thomas [to Lore who is in a daze]: If the soldiers ask you anything, I'm your brother, and our parents are dead. Just say that.

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Lore: They shot Gunther.Thomas: You should have stayed down like I told you.Lore: It's your fault they shot him. You stole their food and now he's dead.Thomas: He fell down. He ran the wrong way. He should have stayed in the trees. On the ground. Like I told you!

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Lore: You won't get away with it. They'll find you. And you will be punished, like all the others. Like all the men that did bad things.Thomas: There are people everywhere that do bad things. No one cares.

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Thomas: I can't help you anymore.Lore: I told them Mutti and Vati would be there. But they're not.Thomas: I don't care.Lore: You lie! You always lie. You can't help it. All you filthy Jews! Sometimes I look at you, and I can see them. One lie after the other. They are everywhere. I can't stop thinking of it. I can't stop thinking of it.

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Girl [on train discussing published photographs of the Holocaust]: One was in Poland, I think. The others were in Germany. There was one of women in a pit. Lots of women. Naked. A little boy.Boy: They're exaggerating it. They're always the same photos, just a different angle each time. And the people are thin and lying on the ground.Girl: But it said they killed them.Boy #2: Shut up. Stop talking about it. It's not like the soldiers in these pictures killed all these people.Boy #3: You don't see any pictures of them actually killing them right?

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Peter: Do you promise not to tell?Lore: What?Peter [producing Thomas's wallet]: I only did it so he couldn't go.Lore [looking at the photo]: It's not him. Thomas Weil. Peter: He said it didn't matter. The man was a Jew. He was dead already. The Americans like Jews. So he pretended to be a Jew.

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Liesel [looking at Lore]: You lied. She said Mutti would be here.Omi: I'm sure Lore didn't lie.Liesel: She's not here, because she's being punished. Isn't she Omi. She's in prison with Vati.Omi: You must never feel ashamed of them. It is all over now. Your parents did nothing wrong. You know that, don't you? They did nothing wrong.

...

Liesel: Please...Lore: I can't.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

After all, depending on your point of view, they can all be interchangable anyway. And, when the one being depicted is based [more or less loosely] on the life of an actual flesh and blood human being, we have certain "facts" by which we can assess the judgments being made.

Of course for some any and all sexual "perverts" are by definition monsters. Especially "back then". James Whale dies in 1957. Years before the advent of the "sexual revolution". Or before Stonewall. Let alone before transgender bathrooms.

So some will judge him almost entirely through the shadows of their own particular prejudices. They won't see the man or his life. They'll see the fag.

On top of that, he was smack dab in the middle of the Hollywood crowd. There decadence more or less goes with the territory. Just, in turn, more or less in the closet.

And then the part about "movie monsters". And the part where our reactions to them come to overlap our reactions to one or another facet of actual human interaction. They come to stand in for our own large and small assumptions about what it all means.

And then the part -- gay or straight -- about getting old. That constant drip...drip...drip as the human body begins to fall apart. Taking you with it.

And [always] the way in which the past and the present are intertwined along a particular trajectory; one that you may or may not be able to communicate to others.

IMDb

Ian McKellen said that he felt very comfortable playing the role of James Whale. For, like Whale, McKellan is a homosexual British actor who spent his early career in the theater and ultimately started a career in Hollywood.

The title comes from a line appeared in Bride of Frankenstein. In it, Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) say to Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive): "To a new world of gods and monsters."

In real life, James Whale wrote a suicide note before jumping into his pool, reassuring his loved ones that he was not depressed, but only wanted to end his constant physical suffering.

James: Who is this new yardman? Hannah: Mr. Bugen... something B... I don't know. He came cheap.

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James [singing as he walks]: Bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling, for you but not for me. O death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling? Grave, where is thy victory?

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James: Am I right in assuming, Mr. Kay, that it's not me that you're interested in, but only my horror pictures? Edmund: No, but it's the horror movies you'll be remembered for. James [indignantly]: I'm not dead yet, Mr. Kay.

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James: Let's make the interview more interesting for me. I will answer truthfully any question that you put to me, and in return, for each answer you will remove an article of clothing. Edmund: I think...That's funny, Mr. Whale. James: Yes, it is, isn't it? My life as a game of strip poker. Shall we play? Edmund: So the rumors are true then. James: Oh? What rumors would those be? Edmund: That you were forced to retire because of, um, a sex scandal. James: A homosexual scandal, you mean. For me to answer a question of that magnitude, you'll have to remove both your shoes and socks. [he takes off his shoes and socks]James: It is kind of you to indulge your elders in their vices. Just as I indulge the young in theirs.

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James: You must understand how Hollywood was years ago. If you were a star nobody cared a tinker's cuss who you slept with, so long as you kept it out of the papers. As for us directors, well, outside Hollywood who even knows who George Cukor is, much less what he gets up to with those boys from the malt shops? Edmund: George Cukor? Who made A Star is Born]/i]? James: Take off your shirt, and I'll tell you all about it.

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Edmund: Frankenstein is one of the great images of the the 20th century, more important than the Mona Lisa. James: Oh, don't be daft. It's just makeup and padding and a big actor. It's hardly the Mona Lisa.

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Clayton: Well, um, w-what were some of your movies? James: Oh, this and that. The only ones that you may have heard of are the Frankenstein movies. Clayton: Frankenstein? And, um, uh, Bride of Frankenstein? And the Son of? And the other ones too? James: Uh, no, I-I just directed the first two. The others were done by hacks.

James: Oh, God, it's ironic. Claton: What is? James: I've spent much of my life outrunning the past, and now it floods all over me.

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James [to Clayton]: Our family had no doubt about who they were, but I was an aberration in that household, a freak of nature. I had imagination, cleverness, joy. Now, where did I get that? Certainly not from them. They took me out of school when I was 14 and put me in a factory. They meant no harm. They were like a family of farmers who've been given a giraffe and don't know what to do with the creature except to harness him to the plow. Hatred was the only thing that kept my soul alive in that soul-killing place. And amongst the men I hated was my dear old dumb father, who put me in that hell in the first place.

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Betty: I bet he's some fruit just pretending to be famous so that he can get in the big guy's pants. Clayton: What makes you say that? Betty: Just thinking out loud. Clayton: Well, why don't you just keep your dirty thoughts to yourself? Betty: Alright then, he's interested in you for your conversation. We all know what a great talker you are. Clayton: Fuck you. Betty: Not anymore you don't.

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Betty: Do you realize you're more interested in this old goober than you ever were in me? Clayton: That's different...he's a man. Besides, you got no business callin' him a homo.Betty: It never crossed your mind?Claytton: He's an artist. But he's too old to be thinkin' about sex. Betty: All the old men I know think about nothing but sex.

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Hannah: Poor Mr. Jimmy. There is much good in him, but he will suffer the fires of hell. Clayton: Oh yeah....you sure of that? Hannah: That is what the priests tell me. His sins of the flesh will keep him from heaven. Clayton: Hell, everybody's got those. Hannah: No. His is the worst. The "unspeakable". The deed no man can name without shame. What is the good English? All I know is bugger, he's a bugger, men who bugger each other... Clayton: A homo? Hannah: Yes! You know. That is why he must go to hell. I do not think it's fair, but God's laws is not for us to judge. Clayton: So, what you're telling me is, Mr. Whale [i]is a homo. Hannah: You did not know?!

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Clayton: I, uh, I watched your movie the other night with some friends.James: Did you, now? Did anyone laugh? Clayton [lying]: No. James: Pity. People are so earnest these days.Clayton: Why? Was it supposed to be funny?James: Yes, of course. A picture about death, I had to make it interesting for myself, you see. So, a comedy about death...The trick is not to spoil it for anyone who's not in on the joke. But the monster never receives any of my jibes. He's noble. Noble and misunderstood.

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Clayton: You're a homosexual. James: Mmm! If one must use the clinical name. Clayton: I'm not, you know. James: I never thought you were. Clayton: You don't think of me that way, do you? James: And what way would that be? Clayton: Well, the way that I look at women. James: Oh, don't be ridiculous. I know a real man like you would break my neck if I so much as laid a finger on you. Besides, you're not my type. So we understand each other. Clayton: Hey. Live and let live.

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James: You might not think it to look at me now, but there was a time when I was at the very pinnacle of my profession. The horror movies were behind me. I'd made Showboat. Major success. Big box office. So now I was to do something important. The picture was called The Road Back. It was an indictment of the Great War and what it did to Germany. It was going to be my masterpiece. Clayton: What happened?James: The fucking studio butchered it. They took the guts out of my picture. They brought in another director to add some slapstick and the movie laid an egg. A great, expensive bomb for which I was blamed. And after that I was out of fashion. I could no longer command the best projects, so I walked away. Why should I spend my time working in this dreadful business?

...

James: ....when the fetters are loosened, a certain hedonism creeps in, don't you think? Oh, there was a time when this house was full of young men. Some of them even posed for me, right where you're sitting now. Of course, they weren't nearly so bashful. Oh, no, this studio was full of bare buttocks and pricks...Mmm. Hard, arrogant pricks. Clayton [exploding out of the blue]: Okay, just cut it out! Okay? Isn't it bad enough that you've told me you're a fuckin' fairy? Now you're gonna rub my face in it?! James [startled]: I assure you, I didn't mean... Clayton: Fuck this! I can't do this anymore! From now on, I'm just the guy that cuts your lawn. Got it?

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James: And the fear that you displayed at our last session...how did you overcome that? Clayton: More like disgust. Jamers: Oh, same difference, Mr. Boone. Disgust, fear of the unknown...all part of the great gulf that stands between us two. Am I right in assuming that you have little experience with men of my persuasion? No teammates in football?Clayton: No. James: No comrades in Korea? Clayton: You must think that the whole world is queer. Well, you know what? It's not. And war certainly isn't. James: Oh, there may be no atheists in the foxholes, but there are, occasionally, lovers.

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James [greeting Princess Margaret]: This is my gardener Clayton Boone. He's never met a princess before, only queens.

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Clayton [referring to conversation between Whale and Cuckor]: What was that all about? James: Oh, don't worry. Nothing of any importance. Just two old men slapping each other with lilies.

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Clayton: That must've been funny for you, seeing your "monsters" again. James [tapping himself on the forehead]: Monsters? The only monsters are in here.

...

James: Barnett. Barnett on the wire. Clayton: Your friend. Yes. He caught his one night coming back from reconnaissance. I wouldn't take him, but McGill did, "just to give the laddie a taste." They were nearly home when a Maxim gun opened fire. Barnet's body landed on this wire that was as thick as briers. It was hanging there the next morning. It was only a hundred yards from the line, but too far for anyone to fetch it. So we saw him every morning stand-to and every evening stand-to. "Good morning, Barnett," we used to say to him. "How's Barnett looking today?" "He seemed a little peaked. Looks a little plumper." And he hung there...well, at least until we were relieved. We introduced him to the new unit before marching out, speaking highly of his companionship. God, we were a witty lot. Laughing at our dead, feeling that it was our death too. But I tell you, for each man who died I thought, "Better you than me, poor sod." You know, a whole generation was wiped out by that war.

...

James: Look. Your portrait, Clayton. It's all gone for me now. All gone. They're nothing but the scribblings of an infant. There's nothing...

...

James: Wait till I tell my friends about this. Won't they be surprised. Clayton: I haven't done anything with you.James: You undressed for me. I've been kissing you. I even touched your prick! How will you ever be able to live with yourself?Clayton: What do you want from me? James: I want you to kill me. Break my neck. Come on, strangle me. It'll be so easy to choke the life out of me. Oh, God. We've come this far. I'm losing my mind. Every day a new piece of it goes, and soon there'll be none of it left. But if you kill me, death will be bearable. You could be my second monster. Come on. Please, do it now. Make me invisible.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

First, the actual disaster itself. And it can be practically anything. And it can occur practically anywhere around the globe. It might be a "natural disaster" or [in this case] one that is considerably more "man-made".

Then the countdown to the movie begins.

This one revolves around the disaster that created "the worst oil spill in U.S. history". The explosion of the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon out in the Gulf of Mexico. In April of 2010. The film basically takes us there. It recreates the incident. We are then able to imagine what it might have been like to be on the rig...to experience the explosion [and the aftermath of it] as it actually unfolded back then.

Thus there are two trajectories. The first revolves around the men and women who were there. Around "the experience" itself. The second revolves around the "politics". Why did it happen? Should it have happened? What was the role played by a corporate mentality concerned only with the bottom line? The part that more or less revolves around this:

A layman's description and example of the Cement Bond Log, a.k.a. CBL; upon landing on the rig, the OIM (Kurt Russel) asks the departing logging crew if they completed their CBL/VDL run. The logging engineer shrugs and proceeds to board the helicopter. Shortly after, the OIM confirms with the BP Well Site Leader, or "Company Man", that no CBL was run. The CBL is used to verify the casing to cement and formation to cement presence and its "bonding" to the casing and to the formation. A "sonic" logging tool is lowered into the well, all the way down towards the zone of interest. The tool is then activated and slowly pulled out of the hole. When energized, the "sonic" transmitter sends acoustic pings around a 360 degrees motion, and detectors placed at various distance in the tool "listen" for the return of these pings, monitor the time it took for the ping to return and how much it was attenuated by the presence or not of cement. Take a large rimed glass (any glass will do though) and put it in an empty sink with the drain plugged. Flick your fingers at the top of the glass rim, and listen for the sound. Fill up the sink around the glass, and once the glass is immersed in the water, repeat the finger flick. Listen for the sound difference. Now imagine the glass is the casing, and the water is the cement, and you have pretty much understood what a CBL tool does.

And, finally, when all is said and done, should we be using these "fossil fuels" at all?

IMDb

The film is based on the 2010 oil rig explosion at the deepwater horizon oil rig. It is the biggest oil disaster in U.S. history causing 11 deaths. The fire lasted for 2 days, until the rig sank and then the oil continued to leak into Gulf of Mexico for 87 days until it was finally capped off.

An oil rig was built just for this film, this rig is located in Chalmette, Louisiana where filming mostly took place. It has been coined as the largest set piece ever built.

A large number of oilfield workers in the Gulf of Mexico were against the making of the film, because they felt that it could dishonor the men who died during the actual event. However Mike Williams (one of the survivors) was all in for the film and actually worked on it with the crew along with another survivor of the event. He felt it was a good way of showing people the circumstances that the crew members went through and that the goal of the film crew was to make it look as real as possible.

Senator: Mr. Williams, can you tell what happened on the Deepwater Horizon?Mike: Around 9:30, I was on the phone with my wife. It was when I heard that whistle. I heard the engines rev. The hiss became a roar. So strong that I could not describe it. A few seconds later, there was a huge explosion. Projectiles flying everywhere. The heat was overwhelming.Senator: Can you explain how the Deepwater Horizon alarm work?Mike: The general alert to all platforms. One: fire, two: combustible gas, three: toxic gas. Each hazard has a particular siren and a particular light.Senator: Have you hear any of these alarms on the Deepwater Horizon?Mike: No sir.Senator: Do you know why you did not hear the alarm, sir? Mr. Williams?

...

Felicia: Buy gas to get to work to buy gas to go to work again. To buy more gas to get to work.

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Jummy: Listen, you mind losing that tie?O'Brien: I would.Jimmy: It's not the tie, it's the color.O'Brien: Purple?Jimmy: More magenta.O'Brien: And?Jimmy: Well, magenta alarm on an oil rig is as bad as it gets. That's worthy of a superstition.

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Andrea: What did Mr. Skip say?Jimmy: They were supposed to test to see whether the cement was holding. I guess they left without doing it.Andrea: What? Hold up, they didn't...Jimmy: Those BP sons of bitches sent the Schumberger guys home.

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Mike: Hey Shane! Schumberger run a cement bond log test?Shane: I don't know. I don't think they did. Mike: Is that stupid?Shane: I don't know if it's stupid...but it ain't smart.

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Mike: Mr. Jimmy wants to know if the team from Schumberger ran a cement bond log test. Kuchta: No, Vidrine, Kaluza sent 'em home without testing anything. Mike: Well, why in the hell would they do that?Kuchta: They never feel the urge to take me through their thinking, Mike, but I assume it's got something to do with "money, money, money, money".

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Kuchta: Doing it all with band-aids and bubble gum, my man. Mike: Everytime I peel one off, I find three or four more. Spit and glue ain't getting it done.

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Jimmy: Walk with me, Mike.Mike: Where we going?Jimmy: To murder some BP company men.Mike: Shit, I got a hammer, a screwdriver.Jimmy: Excellent.

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Jimmy: So, we got all 500 feet of cement poured, huh?Vidrine: Yep.Jimmy: That cement's the only thing between us and a blowout. And it's cured?Vidrine: Yes.Jimmy: Had enough time? Takes time to do it right. I mean if that cement job is compromised then everything above it is too.

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Jimmy: You don't want to know if that cement job on this well is shit 'cause you're 43 days and 50 million dollars over budget. Kaluza: You really ought to include yourself in that.Jimmy: BP picked this spot to drill, Bob. Consequences of that is on you guys...The point is you sent the testing team home before they could do their job....What would it have cost to run the test...125 grand? You're a 180 billion dollar company and you're cheap.Vidrine: That's why we are a one hundred and eighty six billion dollar company. We worry about those bills.

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Vidrine: Name a few. I would love to hear exactly what piece of mission critical equipment are down. Mike: Shit, where do I start. "A" drilling chair. Process station 18. BOP control pods. Telephone system. Pipe-racking system. GPS antenna. Direct TV system. Wireless internet. Iron roughneck. Top drive rack back system. Auxillary draw-works control. Salt water service pumps. Smoke alarms in the galley. And the reason why you're sweating so hartd is 'cause the compressor for the AC on this deck is down too.

...

Mike [to Vidrine]: Nope. Hope ain't a tactic, Don.

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Mike [sarcastically to Vidrine]: That's 43 days behind, not 50. Simple mathematics. Original completion date was March 8th. It's April 20th today, 43 days. You'd think you money-hungry sons of bitches would at least be good at math.

...

Jimmy [to Mike]: We should have seen some mud...

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Felicia [on Skype]: Mike, what is that? Is everything okay?

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Caleb: We gotta go!! We gotta go right now!!!

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Felicia [on Skype]: Is it just me or did it get real bright in there all of a sudden? Mike, what is that? Is everything ok? Mike?

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Andrea: Magenta! Magenta alarms!! The well is blowing out!!!

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Andrea: I'm gonna cut the pipe.Kuchta: Hey, hey, hey. Andrea get your ass back on station. We don't have the authority.Andrea: I'm gonna seal the well. Kuchta: Do not touch that button!

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Vidrine [to Andrea]: What happened?

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Mike [watching a lifeboat leave the rig]: They left us! They left us!

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Mike: Listen to me. Look at me. We came up higher, so we can jump out further. Okay? We're gonna jump over the fire.Andrea: I can't. Jump.Mike: Trust me. We're not gonna hit the fire.Andrea: I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die.Mike: You're not going to die. Our choice...our choice right now is to burn or jump.Andrea [hysterically]: Don't touch me! don't touch me! Don't touch me!...Do what you want. Mike: I'm gonna do whatever you do. My wife's name is Felicia. My daughter's name is Sydney. And I will see them again. Do you understand me?!

...

Title card: BP supervisors. Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine were convicted of manslaughter. In 2015, these charges were dismissed. 11 men died aboard the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010. The blowout lasted 87 days and spilled an estimated 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil disaster in US history.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Not only are you fed up with the trials and the tribulations of living in the "modern world", you are determined to make sure that your family is too. So you take them deep into the forest of the Pacific Northwest and you raise them to live as you have come to imagine the human species was meant to be raised.

In other words, "intellectually, emotionally and physically fit". In other words, considerably more in alignment with socialism than capitalism. Which, from Ben's point of view, is right around the corner from fascism. And, let's face it, until the working class finally does revolt against the powers that be, this may well be the only final solution. One family at a time as it were.

Of course all of this revolves entirely around how Ben has come to understand what this means himself. And always -- always -- with the very best of intentions.

On the other hand, while he tends to eschew the modern world there are still any number of things that connect him to it. So it's really all about where he chooses to draw the line.

But even here the law of unexpected consequences prevails. The modern world catches up with him. In particular, when, out of the blue, he needs something that only the modern world can provide: a hospital for Mom. Then Mom dies. She commits suicide. Then in order to cremate her [as she had requested in her will], he finds himself being pulled back into "society". And then Mom's parents want to tug -- yank -- his children back into the mainstream with them. And God. And he is not about to let that happen. At least not without a fight.

Sometimes [admittedly] it is hard to tell: Is this a tribute to idealism or a mockery of it.

IMDb

Director Matt Ross had the actors who portrayed the six kids sign a contract promising that they wouldn't eat sugar or junk food for the duration of the filming.

In the campfire-scene at the beginning you can see Rellian reading "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevski. The novel is about three brothers, who with increasing age, start to shun and rebel against the ways of their father. Just like Rellian himself does later on in the movie.

Ben [to Bo after Bo has killed a deer]: Today, the boy is dead. And in his place is a man.

His ideals apparently don't include animal rights.

Ben: Vesp? How you getting along?Vespyr: I just finished chapter 12, "the world on a string. "Ben: What? Are you having any trouble with quantum entanglement? Planck length versus Planck time?Vespyr: I'm fine.Ben: Good. Then tomorrow after lunch, you can give a brief presentation on m-theory.

...

Ben: Mom needs to be in the hospital right now. Vespyr: But you said hospitals are a great place to go if you're a healthy person and you want to die. Zaja: You said Americans are under-educated and over-medicated. Kielyr: You said the AMA are avaricious whores only too willing to spread their fat legs for Big Pharma. Ben: All those things are true. But mom does not have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin to conduct electrical signals in her brain.

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Ben [about the flirtatious girls]: Go talk to them. We got time. Bo: Ask them what they think of the working people creating an armed revolution against the exploiting classes and their state structures? Ben: Well, Marxists can be just as genocidal as capitalists. Bo: Or whether or not she's a dialectical materialist and accords primacy to the class struggle? Ben: Avoid Marxism. Or telling her you're a Trotskyite. Bo: Trotskyist. Only a Stalinist would call a Trotskyist a Trotskyite. And I'm not a Trotskyist anymore. I'm a Maoist. Ben: Right. I forgot, sorry.

Ben [to his children]: Last night, mommy killed herself. She finally did it. Your mother is dead. Nothing is going to change. We will go on living in exactly the same way. We're a family.

...

Nai [who looks to be about 5 years old]: We don't hate Nana and Grandpa, but the rest of their tribe are fascist capitalists. Kielyr: You're just repeating whatever dad says. Nai: I'm writing down everything you say - in my mind. Kielyr: Do you even know what a fascist is? Nai: Violent nationalist militants, supported by big business, and they're totalitarian single-party dictators.

...

Ben [to his children]: We can't go to mommy's funeral. We have to do what we're told. Some fights, you can't win. The powerful control the lives of the powerless. That's the way the world works. It's unjust and it's unfair. But that's just too damn bad. We have to shut up and accept it. [he ponders what he just said to them]Ben: Well, fuck that!

...

Ben [to his children as they pass endless strip malls and fast food restaurants]: Attention, all campers. This is your captain speaking. Here we have the embodiment of Calvin Coolidge's statement that the business of America is business. Our democracy is one of the brightest lights of social justice in the history of humankind, and yet most of our fellow citizens engage in frenzied shopping as their primary form of social interaction. Come on down! Let's go shopping! These prices are insane!

...

Kielyr [about the book she is reading, Lolita]: It's disturbing.Ben: More specific.Kielyr: Can I just read?Ben: After you give us your analysis thus far.Kielyr: There's this old man who loves this girl, and she's only 12 years old...Because it's written from his perspective, you sort of understand and sympathize with him, which is kind of amazing because he's essentially a child molester. But his love for her is beautiful. But it's also sort of a trick because it's so wrong. You know, he's old, and he basically rapes her. So it makes me feel...I hate him. And yet somehow I feel sorry for him at the same time.Ben: Well done.

...

Nai [who looks to be about 4 or 5]: What does rape mean? Ben [almost matter-of-factly]: When a person, usually a man, forces another person, usually a woman, to have sexual intercourse. Nai: Oh. What's sexual intercourse? Ben: When a man sticks his penis in a woman's vagina...Everyone keep their eyes peeled for deer. Nai: Why would a man stick his penis in a woman's vagina? Ben: Because it can give them both pleasure. And because the combination of a man's sperm and a woman's egg can create a baby and continue the human race. Nai: But that's where she pees. Ben: Pee comes not from the vagina, but from the urethra, which is within the outer labia. But generally speaking, yes, that is where she pees...Everyone keep your eyes open for game of any kind.

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Kielyr: Okay, you can think that everyone is fat here, but we don't make fun of people. Right, Dad? Ben: That's right. We don't make fun of people. Vespyr: Except Christians.

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Rellian: What kind of crazy person celebrates Noam Chomsky's birthday like it's some kind of official holiday? Why can't we celebrate Christmas like the rest of the entire world? Ben: You would prefer to celebrate a magical fictitious elf, instead of a living humanitarian who's done so much to promote human rights and understanding?...Okay, well, let's have a discourse.Rellian: Forget it.Ben: No, explain. Take the opportunity to make your case. We're all open to hearing your arguments. If they're valid and you persuade us, I'm sure we'd all be willing to change our minds.

...

Nai [the 4 or 5 year old]: Dad, can I have some wine?Ben: Sure. Why not?Harper: Ben. No. Children don't drink wine. Ben: In France and other countries, children drink small amounts of wine all the time. It's a digestive. It's not crack. Nai: What's crack? Ben: Crack is a crystallized, highly addictive derivative of the stimulant cocaine. In the mid-1980s, it accelerated the decimation of inner-city neighborhoods. Crackheads, some of them kids just like you guys, were killing each other over nothing, over their Nikes. Nai: They killed each other for Nike? The Greek winged-goddess of victory?

...

Harper: We're just doing the best we can, Ben. That's all anybody is doing.Ben: So am I! Just the best that we know how.Harper: I'm sorry it doesn't live up to your high standards!Ben: I tell the truth to my kids. I don't lie to my kids.Harper: Protecting children from certain concepts that they are too young to understand is not lying to them.

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Dave: The kids need structure, stability. They need to go to a real school, so they can get real jobs.Harper: Oh, for Christ's sake. You're going to get them killed! I'm sorry. But your kids are without a mother now. I don't think you have any idea what you're doing to them.Ben: I'm saving their lives. That's what I'm doing.Harper: Ben, you sound so ridiculous. Ben: Is knowing how to set a broken bone or how to treat a severe burn ridiculous? Knowing how to navigate by the stars in total darkness, that's ridiculous? How to identify edible plants, how to make clothes from animal skins, how to survive in the forest with nothing but a knife? That's ridiculous to you? Harper: Jesus.Ben: They have the cardiovascular and muscular endurance levels of elite athletes.Harper: Who cares? They're children! They need to go to school. They need to learn about the world.

...

Ben: Zaja. How would you characterize the 2010 Supreme Court decision on citizens united?Zaja [who is 8]: Corporations have the same rights as people, so there's no spending limit on candidates. Which means our country is ruled by corporations and their lobbyists who fund candidates and command their fealty by demanding that...Harper: Jesus Christ. You made your point. We get it.

...

Claire: What kind of music do you listen to?Bo: Mostly Bach. Mainly the Goldberg variations, especially Glenn Gould's versions. I also like the unaccompanied cello suites, preferably when played by Yo-Yo Ma.Claire: Where are you from?

...

Bo: We're just back in the states because of my dad's sabbatical. He's writing a book on Dr. Spock. Claire: Oh, I love Star Trek. It's awesome. Bo: Which star?Claire: You know, Spock. The guy with the ears, he's from Star Trek.Bo: No, Dr. Spock was from Connecticut. Right after Yale, he wrote baby and child care in 1947. It's one of the seminal books on child-rearing.Claire: I was talking about that old TV show.Bo: Oh.

...

Ben [commandeering the eulogy from the minister]: First of all, Leslie practiced Buddhism, which to her was a philosophy and not an organized religion. In fact, Leslie abhorred all organized religions. To her, they were the most dangerous fairy tales ever invented, designed to elicit blind obedience, and strike fear into the hearts of the innocent and the uninformed. To her, the only thing worse than death would have been the knowledge that her rotting flesh was to be trapped for all eternity inside a big box, and buried in the middle of a fucking golf course. Although the absurdity of being eulogized by someone that didn't even know her has exactly the kind of comedic flourish that Leslie would have cherished. If nothing else, she had a sense of humor. I want to read something to all of you, so you'll know what I mean. [pulling out a piece of paper] Ben: Leslie's last will and testament. And I quote, "In the event of my death, I, Leslie Abigail Cash, as a Buddhist, wish to be cremated. My funeral, such as it is, shall be a celebration of the life cycle, with music and dancing. After, it is my expressed desire that my ashes shall be taken to a nondescript location, preferably public and heavily populated. At which point my ashes, promptly and unceremoniously, are to be flushed down the nearest toilet." End quote. Now that's comedy.

...

Jack: Abby and I are gonna take the children to the ceremony, and then you can follow us to the house.Ben: They're my kids. They're staying with me.Jack: Children, I'm sorry that you have to witness this, but I don't think your father is fit to attend the funeral.Ben: We're not gonna let you put her in the ground!Jack: Who do you think the police are gonna listen to? Me? Or some hippie in a clown outfit?

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Rellian: Mom had psychotic episodes. She had hallucinations. Of smashing our heads in with rocks. I heard them talking about it.Bo: Mom was sicker than any of us knew.Rellian: Dad made her crazy. Dad's dangerous. You think our lives are so great. You think dad is so perfect.

...

Bo: I just want to go to college. Ben: You speak six languages. You have high math, theoretical physics! This is what I'm talking about! What the hell are these people going to teach you? Bo: I know nothing! I know nothing! I am a freak because of you! You made us freaks! And mom knew that! She understood! Unless it comes out of a fucking book, I don't know anything about anything!

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Jack: You told me they were in school.Ben: They are. Leslie and I are their teachers....were their teachers.Jack: So you're teaching them to steal.Ben: Of course not.Jack: "Mission: Free the food"?Ben: That was part of their training.Jack: So you're "training" them to steal.Ben: Their mother had just died. They were in shock. They were devastated. They needed a distraction. So we made it Noam Chomsky day.Jack: "Noam Chomsky day." I don't even know who that is. That's the day you gave my grandchildren real weapons.

...

Abby [reading a letter from Leslie to Ben]: "Dear mom, you don't need to come get me anymore. Burn the other letter. What Ben and I have created here may be unique in all of human existence. We created a paradise out of Plato's Republic. Our children shall be philosopher kings. It makes me so indescribably happy. I'm going to get better out here. I know I will. Because we are defined by our actions, not our words. "

Nai: We want to complete the mission.Ben: No. There is no mission.Nai: Mission: Rescue dad and mommy. Mom wanted to be cremated. And we want to honor her wishes. And flush her down the toilet.Ben: I can't put any of you in danger ever again. I'm sorry.Rellian: "If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world."Ben: Noam Chomsky.

...

Kielyr: Dad, I found her.Nai [reading the headstone inscription]: "Leslie Abigail Cash. May god bless her soul for all eternity."Zaja: Let's dig. Otherwise she has to lie under that bullshit forever.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

One summer night a thirteen year old girl vanishes. Her bicycle is found in the exact spot and on the exact same date where 23 years earlier another young girl had been raped and killed.

How are they connected? Are they connected at all?

This is basically what retired police detective Krischan is intent on finding out. After all, "the fact that Krischan was unable to catch the killer two decades prior still haunts him to this very day."

This is a "crime thriller", but unlike so many of them, it is also a fine tuned character study of the men and women who get caught up in these terrible events. Tragedies that mean nothing to almost everyone. But experiences that can gut those who are actually ensnared in the unfolding events.

And on both sides of the law.

Now, right from the start we know who the killer is in the first murder. And we know that he was not alone. As one reviewer noted, "as viewers, we know it all, and gradually we move to the edge of our seat as we see how the wrong decisions are made, how the wrong inferences are drawn, how actions by one can be misconstrued by another all too easily, and ultimately how facts can be ignored or discarded for political expediency or professional jealousy and for the need to close a case, once and for all."

That's how these things often unfold. And the irony is that while we know that all of this is scripted, it is as though the point of the film is to bring to our awareness how "real crimes" of this nature are not scripted at all. Just flesh and blood human beings stumbling about, doing [more or less] the best they can.

Cops and criminals it seems are "human all too human" as well.

And then that gap [at the end] between what each individual character thinks has happened and what has actually happened instead. Again, we [the audience] know right from the start. But the characters only think that they know. And only one of them is right. But he doesn't prevail.

The seemingly obvious reference to Fargo, having Jule Böwe play a pregnant cop, is in fact not a reference. When she auditioned for the part it wasn't known she was pregnant. It wasn't until she got the part that she told the director she was three months pregnant, when she in fact was six months pregnant. In the end the director liked the idea and decided to write it into the script.

Director Baran bo Odar, along with the films cinematographer, watched several westerns before shooting this picture. This was to give the movie more of a western style to it instead of being just another thriller.

THE SILENCE [Das Letzte Schweigen] 2010Written in part and directed by Baran bo Odar

Peer [to Pia an 11 year old girl he has just raped]: I'm sorry...[then he kills her while Timo looks on]

...

Peer [to Timo as he carries Pia's lifeless body to the car]: Help me! Help me, help me!

...

Matthias: I requested to have the new system put on the computers. It's such a mess.Krischan: Good luck, I tried to do the thing last year.Matthias: They'll listen to me.Krischan: Sure they will. They always listen to assholes.

...

Krischan: It's got to be here somewhere. I wanted to show it to you before you go. That damn case cost me my marriage. They just thre wit away!David: Is this it?Krischan [looking in the file box]: Yes, it is. Her name was Pia....July 8th.David: Today is July 8th.Krischan [realizing it]: Yes, it is...

...

Reporter [on TV]: Exactly 23 years today on July 8th, 1986, the 11 year old Pia was raped and murdered in this field. Back then a boy saw a red car, but the killer was never caught. Today, police found a girl's bike and a gym bag in the same spot. Traces of blood suggest violence. The cases are bizarrely similar. Then, too, there was initially no victim. Only weeks after the murder, the girl's body was found in a lake. The killer was never caught. Yet the police stated it is still a missing persons case.

...

Elena [Pia's mom]: They say Sinikka will show up again.Krischan: Nonsense.Elena: It's exactly like it was back then.Krischan: Everything. But why?

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Elena [to David]: Are you going to catch him this time, or will he get away again? I always wanted to know what he looked like.

...

Peer: Do you like the girl from the 7th floor?Timo: What girl?Peer: The girl in the green bathing suit. The one you were watching by the pool.Timo: That's not true.Peer: How long have you had it?Timo: Had what?Peer: I see it in the way you look sometimes. I thought I knew that look.[Timo says nothing but looks uncomfortable]Peer: I've got some movies if you want to watch them.

...

Ruth [to Karl about Sinikka]: Why didn't you drive her to tennis practice?

...

Timo: Why did you do it?Peer: Why did I do what?Timo: With the girl? The one who is missing.Peer: Well....I didn't do it. Honestly.Timo: Just like back then...Peer: It must be a coincidence....It was a one time thing back then. Why would I do that again?

...

Timo [looking at a photograph of Pia]: Is that your daughter?Elena: Yes.Timo: I have two children, too. Mine are 6 and 13. A boy and a girl. Malte and Laura.[a long pause]Timo: What's your daughter's name?Elena: Pia.Timo: Pia. It's a beautiful name.

We know where this is going: To the bottom of the lake.

Jana: Who's next on the list?David: Sommer, Peer Sommer.

...

Julia: When are you coming home?Timo: I don't know. Tonight.Julia: Why not earlier? Where are you?Timo: I'm at a lake.Julia: At a lake? I thought you were at the site. Timo: Can I talk to Malte and Luara please...

...

Julia: What are you doing in here?Krischan: This must be Daddy's little office, huh?Julia: Excuse me?Krischan [turning the computer screen toward her]: The computer is full of that stuff.

Child pornography.

Reporter [on TV]: Police assume that the suspected killer committed suicide. His DNA was on the headphones of Pia, murdered in 1986. Police assume that in addition to Pia, he killed yet another girl, the then 12-year-old Martina B. has been missing since 1982. Sinikka still hasn't been found.

...

David: There were two people. Matthias: You still here?David: We were wrong. There were two people. Matthias: What do you mean?David: The boy said the killer threw something out the window.Matthias: Yes, the headphones.David: Right, but he saw the car facing this way, North. But the headphones were here, on the right side...Someone was on the passenger side.Matthias: The gust from the car could have blown the headphones over to the other side.David: What you you mean, "gust"? They started the car. There was no gust. The boy was here. He could only have seen the passenger. There was another man in the car.

...

David: They committerd the crime together in 1986. But then Timo Friedrich disappeared, without a trace. He left Walsen. He got married, started a family and even changed his name. And now this guy has been looking for him desparately. 23 years without success. What does he do? He recreates the crime right down to the last detail. The only person who can interpret this message is Timo Friedrich.

Matthias doesn't buy it. And let's just say that Matthias is no Columbo.

David [aloud to himself]: Yes. There were two guys. There were two guys...

...

David [at the spot where Pia was murdered]: My wife...Every second, every hour...actually always. When does it stop?Elena: Never.

...

Elena: Did he do it?[David nods]

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

There comes a time in the lives of some of us when we just want to be left alone. No exception. And the "grumpy old man" theme here is nothing short of legendary.

Bottom line: They have had their fill of all the rest of us and they wish only to go about the business of living from day to day on their own terms. And, then, when it is absolutely necessary for them to intereact, it invariably comes down to the extent to which they insist that others go about the business of living life on their terms too.

So, by and large, the cinematic options here generally come down to two:

1] some ominous encounter between them and those unfortunate enough to come between them and their misanthropy2] folks bump into their lives and miracuously they are pulled up out of their shell; they are able to go about the business of being just like the rest of us.

Basically this is one of those films in which, in order to understand a character's behaviors in the here and now, you must have at least some understanding of all the parts there and then. Now, in a film of course this is accomplished through the use of flashbacks. In "real life" though we don't have them at our disposal. Instead, we judge the behaviors of others more or less by our own flashbacks.

In other words, it's a miracle we manage to communicate as well as we do.

And, with Ove, the first thing we have to be clear about is this: he truly, truly loved his wife Sonja. And now she is dead. So the film is also an exploration into loss.

Look for the idiots. Them and the whiteshirts.

IMDb

Two different ragdoll cats, Magic and Orlando, were used in the movie. After a casting, Magic was selected due to his adherence, curiousness and never could be startled away. Orlando was a stand-in used for the scenes when required to stay put or be carried for long periods of time.

Ove [at his wife's grave]: It's just chaos without you here....but if I hurry now, I might see you by the end of the day. I miss you...

The hanging: Take two.

Sonja: The shelves turned out great.Ove [as a younger man]: Yes....How many books have you got?Sonja: Well, there are these, and the box in the kitchen, and those in the shed.Ove [looking at the shelf space]: I'll build you another.

The hanging: Take three.

Ove [voiceover while hanging from the ceiling]: They say the brain works faster as it is dying. As if the outside world is moving in slow motion. Quite a lot passed through my brain. Mainly stuff to do with radiators, surprisingly.

...

Ove: Hey! What are you doing? Mähät: It scratched Prince. Ove: Throw another stone and I'll transform your mutt into a door mat.Mähät: It is a chihuahua. And the cat's got both rabies and the plague. Ove: Oh, yes. Clearly, you do too. But we do not throw stones at you. Mähät: You still think you own the place and can do whatever you want? Slimy fucking old man. I'll tell Anders. Ove: Go ahead, tell him. If you can make someone who drives an Audi understand. Four zeros on the grill and a fifth at the wheel...If that dog pees on our slabs again, I'll electrify it.

...

Ove [at the hardware store throwing a frayed rope down on the counter]: What kind of shit do you sell? Hey? It said "Universal usage -- suitable for every need".Store clerk: What did you use it for?

...

Sonja [to Ove as a young man]: Do you often take this train?

...

Ove [to Patrick]: Manuals are for reading in case you didn't know.

...

Ove [to Parvaneh]: Now I want you you listen to me. You've given birth twice. Three times, soon. You've come all the way from Iran, fleeing war and all kinds of hell. You've learned a new language, got an education and a job. And you've married a loser. So, you'll have no problems learning how to drive. I mean, we're not talking brain surgery here.

...

Parvaneh: I have thought of one thing. Ove: Stop Boasting.

...

Parvaneh: I never met Sonja, and she was probably absolutely wonderful, but you've made her into a saint. I think she'd rather be a regular human being. A wonderful but regular human being.Ove [enraged]: Stop talking!...The more all the idiots keep babbling about her, the more they'll drown out the little memory I have of her voice....There was nothing before Sonja, and there is nothing after her.Parvaneh: I'm something.

...

Whiteshirt: Seriously, what's your problem, Ove? I know. You're a nit-picking obstructionist. You see, I've done my research on you in the local archives and online, and I know everything. I've read all your crazy letters to newspapers and authorities. I know all about your wife, her accident and how you blame it on everyone and everything. But what if the real reason was simply that you just weren't enough?

...

Adrian: Mirsad has been kicked out and we thought he might stay here.Ove [who has just tried and failed to commit suicide...again]: What? Do you think this is a damn hotel? Adrian: Mirsad came out today.Mirsad: I told my dad I was one of those gays. He hates gays.Adrian: He was going to kill himself if any of his children were gay. But never mind, we'll leave.....Sonja was always helping people.

...

Ove: This means war!!

...

Ove [to Anita]: Give me every damn document you've had from the authorities, the social services, the council, the church...I want everything on Rune!!

...

Parvaneh: You've had a hard time. Everyone's an idiot. And you just give up. Because you think you're the only one on this planet who can cope without any help at all. But do you know what, Ove? No one manages completely on their own. No one....Not even you.

...

Ove [to Parvaneh]: I think I sat with her like that for a week. No one dared speak to me, which was just as well. Until one day....they told me she would never wake up again. But then the unfathomable happened. It was like the best thing and the worst thing happening all at once....And the following day, I had to tell her what happened.

...

Ove [to Parvaneh]: That's when I entered into a big black hole. I wanted to obliterate them all. Every single son-of-a-bitch: the bus company, the drunken driver, the wine merchant, the travel group. All of them...

...

Sonja [to Ove as a young man]: Ove....either we die or we live.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

Of course conservatives are generally of the opinion that none of this stuff really matters. However shitty your upbringing might have been, and however dire your circumstances, it ever and always revolves around "individual responsibility". If you make the wrong choices it is because you and only you fucked up. And [thus] the very last thing "the government" should be concerned with is taking all of that into consideration. Let alone exploring the political parameters that revolve around the extent to which the government may or may not have been involved in creating the conditions where "stuff like this" becomes literally a way of life for thousands upon thousands of residents in Chiron's world.

The reality of course is always going to be a complex intertwining of "I" and "we" and "them". This is just one particular trajectory. And it may or may not be applicable to any other. After all, how many of us were born and raised in Liberty City.

The Miami Vice rendition.

Imagine then "coming of age" in this particular neighborhood, and coming to embody this particular frame of mind. So, meet Little, Chiron and Black. A natural progression as it were.

Yes, movies like this come down the pike all the time. You're thinking that each one will be effective in closing the gap between prejudice and understanding. And for some it does. But then the conditions that created these narratives really don't change much at all. In other words, there was Liberty City before Obama was elected and Liberty City after he was gone. Of course that part isn't in the script at all. Unless it's all just supposed to be understood.

When Juan teaches Little how to swim, Mahershala Ali is really teaching Alex R. Hibbert how to swim. When production started, Hibbert did not know how to swim.

In an interview, Barry Jenkins said that the three actors who play Chiron never met during production. He wanted each of them to build their own persona of Chiron during their respective segments, with no influence from the other portrayals. The same technique was used with the actors who play Kevin.

Both director Barry Jenkins and writer Tarell Alvin McCraney's vision was pretty clear and singular in that both men grew up in the same Liberty City neighborhood of Miami with mothers who had both struggled with drug addiction. Roughly 80% of the film was shot on location here, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the United States. Initially the production was apprehensive about safety issues until the word got out that Jenkins was from the neighborhood - then everything changed for the better. The locals couldn't have been more welcoming and cooperative. Naomie Harris has said that she'd never felt so appreciated and at ease on a film set during the shoot.

Such were the budgetary constraints on this production, the cast had to share one trailer for costume, hair and makeup and one rest room stall had to be shared by cast and crew.

An early meeting with Brad Pitt helped director Barry Jenkins get the necessary funds and distribution deal he required.

When first approached, Naomie Harris was very reluctant to play a crack addict since it was so alien to her teetotaling persona. Harris had been insistent from the start on a career plan to only portray women in a positive light. However, when Barry Jenkins confided to her that she'd be portraying a character based on his own crack-addicted mother, she agreed to take on the role. In preparation for the part she spent a month researching the lives of drug addicts by watching several videos of crack addicts on YouTube.

MOONLIGHT [2016]Written and directed by Barry Jenkins

Juan: Business good? Terrence: Business good. Everybody cleaned out, it's in the cut if you want it.

...

Juan [to Teresa]: I found this boy in a dope spot. Wasn't no crackheads there. Just him alone. He ain't talkin' though, so why don't you see if you can get him to say something.

...

Kevin: All you gotta do is show these niggas you ain't soft.Chiron [as a boy]: But I ain't soft.Kevin: I know, I know. But it don't mean nothing if they don't know.

...

Juan [to Chiron as a boy]: Ok. Let your head rest in my hand. Relax. I got you. I promise. I won't let you go. Hey man. I got you. There you go. Ten Seconds. Right there. You in the middle of the world.

...

Juan [to Chiron as a boy]: Let me tell you something, man....there are black people everywhere. Remember that, okay? Ain't no place in the world you can go without black people. We's the first on this planet. I've been here a long time. Out of Cuba. A lot of black folks are Cuban. You wouldn't know from being here now. I was a wild little shortie, man. Just like you. Running around with no shoes on, the moon was out. This one time, I run by this old...this old lady. I was running, howling. Kinda of a fool, boy. This old lady, she stopped me. She said..."Running around, catching a lot of light. In moonlight, black boys look blue. You're blue. That's what I'm gonna call you: 'Blue'. Little: So your name 'Blue'? Juan [laughing] Nah. [pause] Juan: At some point, you gotta decide for yourself who you're going to be. Can't let nobody make that decision for you.

Chiron [innocently]: What's a faggot? Juan: A faggot is...a word used to make gay people feel bad. Chiron: Am I a faggot? Juan: No. You're not a faggot. You can be gay, but you don't have to let nobody call you a faggot.

...

Chiron: Do you sell drugs? Juan [after a long pause]: Yeah. Chiron: And my momma, she do drugs, right? Juan [after a long pause]: Yeah. [Chiron gets up from the table and leaves. He never sees Juan again]

Kevin: What you cry about? Chiron: Shit, I cry so much, sometimes I feel like I'm just gonna turn into drops. Kevin: But you just roll out into the water, right? Roll out into the water just like all these other motherfuckers trying to drown their sorrow.

Paula [to Chiron, now a man]: I messed up. I fucked it all the way up. I know that. But your heart ain't got to be black, like mine, baby....I love you, Chiron. I love you, baby. I mean you ain't got to love me. Lord knows I did not have love for you when you needed it, I know that. So you ain't gotta love me. But you gon' know that I love you.

Kevin: Who is you man? Chiron: Who, me? Kevin: Yeah nigga. You. Them fronts? That car? Who is you Chiron? Chiron: I'm me man. Ain't trying to be nothing else. Kevin: So you hard now? Chiron: I ain't say that. Kevin: Then what? [pause] Kevin: Look. I'm not trying hem you up. Just... I ain't seen you in a minute. Not what I expected, none of it. Not good or bad. Just not what I expected. Chiron: Well, what did you expect? [pause] Kevin: You remember the last time I saw you? [pause] Chiron: For a long time, tried not to remember. Tried to forget all those times. The good... the bad. All of it. [pause] Kevin: Yeah....

...

Kevin: I wasn't never worth shit. Just kept going on, man. Never did anything I actually wanted to do, was all I could do to do what other folks thought I should do. I wasn't never really myself. Chiron: And now?

...

Chiron: You the only man that ever touched me. You're the only one.[pause]Chiron: I haven't really touched anyone since.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

And, in the dark, everything always seems to be creepier; more omninous...more precarious.

And then when the animals are people, well, almost anything goes, right? For example, there is that murky muddle where nonfiction ends and fiction begins. And that equally ambiguous quagmire where one point of view ends and another begins. Trying to separate what is actually true from what you believe is true. Or what you think that you believe is true. Lots and lots of room for, among other things, misunderstandings.

And unintended consequences.

One of those "story within a story" contraptions. The real world and the real world contorted into a novel world.

A plot that more or less revolves around this:

"Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world. It's a lot less painful. Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world."

Here one need but take a gander at that real world as it unfolds. Is it any wonder then that so many of us choose to live a lie?

And then there are those who react to it all from the perspective of the sociopath. And here, among other things, there is no reasoning with them. They are nocturnal animals even in broad daylight.

Postmodern love. It's basically a nightmare. But a gorgeous nightmare for some. It's all just a matter of perspective.

Look for one of the most bizarre opening credits sequences that you are ever likely to see.

IMDb

Isla Fisher revealed on NBC's "Today" that the 'hillbilly' night shoot in California's Mojave Desert lasted about ten days and was such a grueling and emotionally draining experience that she was thoroughly relieved when the film wrapped.

Susan: You know the strange thing is, I don't really care about all this art. Hutton: That doesn't sound like you.Susan: I know but I don't. Hutton: Well, I care. It pisses me off. Susan: I know you do. Don't worry, I can fill the walls with some new LA artists and people will think we're ahead of the curve instead of going broke. You won't have to be embarassed.

...

Chloe [at a social event]: So I said, "Well, my mother always told me if you massage your pussy with Pam cooking spray a month before the baby comes,you don't need vaginal rejuvenation".Susan: I'll have to get some Pam.

...

Carlos: The opening was spectacular last night. Susan: Really? That's what you thought?Carlos: What, you didn't?Susan: No. Catrlos: I thought the work was incredibly strong. So perfect with all this junk culture that we live in. Susan: It's junk It is junk. Total junk.

...

Carlos: No one really likes what they do.Susan: Then why do we do it?Carlos: Because we're driven....We get into things when we're young and because we think they mean something.Susan: And then we find out that they don't.Carlos: Oh, Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world. It's a lot less painful. Believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.

...

Susan: You're gonna be a great novelist 'cause you have created a fictitious character in your head about...Edward: No.Susan: Yes.

...

Edward: Why'd you give up wanting to become an artist?Susan: Because I'm too cynical to become an artist. I think to be really, really good you have to come from somewhere inside that I'm just not sure I have.

...

Anne [mother]: Come on, Susan, I know you think that we don't care about the same things, but you're wrong. In a few years, all these bourgeois things, as you so like to call them, are going to be very importyant to you, and Edwards not going to be able to give them to you. He has no money. He's not driven. He's not ambitious....You may not realize it but you and I are a lot more alike than you think.Susan: No, you are wrong. You and I are nothing alike.Anne: Really? Just wait. We all eventually turn into our mothers.

This is really what the story is all about. You know, if that's true.

Susan: Why are you so driven to write?Edward: I guess it's a way of keeping things alive. You know, saving things that ewill eventually die. If I wrtie it down, then, it'll last forever.

...

Alex: You didn't sleep again, did you?Susan: You know me, I never sleep. My ex-husband used to call me a nocturnal animal...It's weird...I've been thinking about him a lot lately, and then recently he sent me this book that he's written and it's violent and it's sad. And he entittled it Nocturnal Animals and he dedicated it to me.

...

Alex: Did you love him?Susan: Yeah, I loved him. He was a writer and, uh, I didn't have faith in him. I panicked and I did something horrible to him. Somethng unforgivable, really.Alex: You left him.Susan: I left him. I left him in a brutal way, for the handsome and dashing Hutton.

Her momma was right then, wasn't she?

Painting on the wall:REVENGE

...

Tony I wanna know, Ray, I wanna know the exact story of what you did to them. Ray: You'll have to ask somebody else.

...

Bobby: I told you, I got lung cancer. It's metastasized. Edward: But you smoke all the time. Bobby: Yeah, well, that's how it works.

...

Tony: What we're gonna do? Bobby: It's a question of how serious you are about seeing justice done. You get me?

...

Bobby [to Tony]: Ray just showed up at Line Camp. I'm gonna let that little idiot get liquored up and then I'm go grap his ass and take him to my camp. And I want you to come with me. We're gonna keep him for a little while, work him over a bit, get a little rough, make him suffer. And then we'll see what he does....Would you like that?

...

Tony: Do you love me?Susan: That's not the point.Edward: No, that is the point. Do you love me?Susan: Yes, I love you.Edward: Well, when you love someone, you work it out. You don't just throw it away. When you love someone you have to be careful with it, you might never get it again.

...

Tony: Bobby? Bobby: What? Tony: Are you in trouble for all of this? Bobby: Hell, I don't know. I don't really give a shit. I'm dying, remember?

...

Ray: You should fucking kill me. You don't know nothing. It's fun to kill people. You, of all people should try it sometime. Tony: Fun? It's fun to kill people? Did you have fun killing my wife and daughter?

Yes, he did.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

He's described as a "brooding, irritable loner". And, being a brooding, irritable loner myself, I'm naturally curious to see how they script this particular life. After all, so much that passes for a life is embedded in a narrative embedded in a sequences of experiences and relationships that we only have so much understanding of and control over.

So the fact that he is what he is [and not what we would be in the same set of circumstances] can only be so much his fault. And it's always where different folks draw the line drawn here between "me" and "him" and "we" and "them" that so many actual lives become entangled.

And then it's being able to recognize the implications of this or not.

Still, where things always get tricky for brooding, irriable loners is [in the movies] when out of the blue they find themselves "obligated" to reconnect with the family. In other words, with the past. Then it is only a matter of whether by the end of the film they remain brooding, irritable loners; or, instead, find one or another road to redemption.

So, first of all, we have to come to an understanding as to why and how he became this brooding, irritable loner in the first place. And here we all have our own unique trajectory. Existential as it were. The turning point for him however revolves almost entirely around the truly horrific death of his three children. And the fact that it was his fault.

In other words, there are some fuck ups so grievous you can never bounce back from them.

From my perspective, this is a film that explores just how problematic and unpredictable and precarious our lives can become when we find oursleves interacting with others in a world that can come at us from all directions. Sometimes the pieces will all fall [fit] into place, but many times [or most times for some] they simply don't and won't. And yet everyone still sees you through their own set of assumptions about good and bad, right and wrong behavior.

Bottom line: If you like films where all the pieces stay pretty much grim from beginning to end then you might like this one. There is some light at the end of the tunnel here but one suspects that this particular loner will never quite reach it.

And then one by one we have to decide for ourselves if he even deserves to.

The town was called Manchester until 1989, when resident Edward Corley led a highly controversial campaign to formally change its name to Manchester-by-the-Sea. The action was passed by the state legislature that year.

While portrayed as working class and blue collar, Manchester-by-the Sea is actually a very upscale and affluent town.

Manchester By The Sea [2016]Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Lee: Listen. If there was... If you could take one guy to an island with you and you knew you'd be safe 'cause he was the best man, he was going to figure out how to survive, he was going to make everything, he was going to make the world a good place on the island, he was going to keep you happy, he, he... This is the best man for the job. No matter what, if it was between me and your father, who would you take? Patrick [as a boy]: My daddy.

...

Mr Emery: What the fuck's the matter with you? You can't talk to the tenants like that. Look, Lee, you do good work. You're dependable. But I get these complaints all the time. You're rude, you're unfriendly, you won't say good morning. Lee: I mean, come on. Mr. Emery, I fix the plumbing. I take out the garbage. I paint their apartments. I do electrical work, which we both know is against the law. I show up on time, I'm working four buildings, and you're getting all the money. So do whatever you're going to do. Mr. Emery: Would you be willing to apologize to Mrs. Olsen? Lee: For what? Mr. Emery: All right, all right, I'll talk to her.

...

Dr. Bethany: But it's not a good disease. Joe [after a pause]: What is a good disease?Dr. Bethany: Poison lvy? Lee: Athlete's foot.

...

Lee [reading his brother's will]: I don't understand. Lawyer: Which... part are you having trouble with? Lee: Well, I can't be his guardian. Lawyer: Well... Uh... Lee: I mean I can't.

...

Randi: Lee, you want to get these fucking pinheads out of my house please? Lee: Yeah, I do. I mean, I really do. [Randi walks away]Lee [jokingly to his friends]: She can't talk to us that way.[they all laugh raucously]Randi [who walks back to them]: I'm not fucking around. It's 2:00 in the fucking morning. Get these fucking assholes dressed and get them the fuck out of here!!

...

Lee [at an interview with the police]: We were partying pretty hard. There was beer. And someone was passing around a joint and there was cocaine. Detective: Cocaine? Lee: Yes. Detective: Okay, go ahead. Lee: Uh, anyway, our bedroom is in the downstairs, and the kids sleep upstairs, so Randi makes everyone leave around 2:00... or three AM. And then... she goes back to bed. So, I go upstairs to check on the kids, and it's fucking freezing upstairs, but I can't use the central heat because it dries out Randi's sinuses, and she gives her really bad headaches. So I go downstairs and put a fire in the fireplace, and I sit down to watch TV, but there's no more beer. I'm still jumping around like a jackrabbit. So I put a couple fire logs in the fire just to warm up the house when I was gone. And then I am going to the mini-mart, but I'm too wasted and I don't want to drive. So I walk. It's about 20 minutes each way. And about halfway there, and I can't remember if I put the screen on the fireplace. I figure it's okay. So I just keep going to the store. And, uh, that's it. Log must've rolled out onto the floor. And the firemen said they pulled Randi out. She was passed out downstairs. And then the furnace blew, and they couldn't go back in again. And that's all I remember.

Lee: Do you actually have sex with these girls? Patrick: Well, we don't just play computer games.

...

Patrick: How do you unbuckle this? I'm scraping the skin off my knuckles. Sandy: Just take your hand out. Patrick: Ow! Sandy: Would you please just take your hand out of my cunt?!

...

Patrick: I'm not moving to Boston, Uncle Lee. Lee: Well, I don't want to talk about that right now. Patrick: You said he left you money so you could move. Lee: Yeah, but that doesn't mean... Patrick: Anyway, what's in Boston? You're a janitor. Lee: So what? Patrick: You could do that anywhere. There's plenty of toilets and clogged-up drains all over town. Lee: I don't want to talk about it. Patrick: All my friends are here. I'm on the hockey team. I'm on the basketball team. I got to maintain our boat now. I work on George's boat two days a week. I got two girlfriends, and I'm in a band. You're a janitor in Quincy. What the hell do you care where you live?

...

Lee [to Patrick after he has a panic attack]: If you're gonna freak out every time you see a frozen chicken I think maybe we should go to the hospital. I don't know anything about this.

...

Patrick: What happened to your hand? Lee: I cut it. Patrick: Oh, thanks. For a minute there, I didn't know what happened.

...

Patrick: You were a tremendous help. Lee: I didn't ask to sit down there. Patrick: You can't make small talk? Like every other grown up in the world? You can't talk about boring bullshit for half an hour? Lee: No. Patrick: Hey, how about those interest rates? I lost my Triple A card. Like everybody else? Lee: No, sorry. Patrick: You're a fucking asshole.

...

Patrick [to Lee who is looking at Joe's rack of rifles]: Who are you going to shoot? You or me?

...

Randi: I said a lot of terrible things to you. Lee: No... Randi: I know you never... Maybe you don't wanna talk to me. Lee: It's not that... Randi: Let me finish, let me finish. Whoever... My heart was broken, cause it's always gonna be broken and I know yours is broken too. And I don't have to carry it. I said things... I should fucking burn in hell for what I said to you. Lee: No, no, no. Randi, no. Randi: I'm just sorry. Lee: It's... I can't expl... I can't... Randi: I love you! Maybe I shouldn't say that. Lee: You can say this. I'm sorry, I gotta go. Randi: We could have lunch? Lee: I'm really sorry, I don't think so. I thank you for saying everything you just said. Randi: You can't just die! Lee: I'm not. I'm not. And I want you to be happy, and I... Randi: I see you walking around here, and I just wanna tell you... Lee: I would want to talk to you, Randi. Please, I've uh... uh... I'm trying to... Randi: Lee, Lee, you've got to... I don't know what. I don't wanna torture you. Lee: This is not... You're not... You're not torturing me. Randi: I just wanna tell you that I was wrong. Lee: No. No. You don't understand, there's nothing... there's nothing there. There's nothing there. Randi: That's not true, that's not true! Lee: You don't understand. Randi: Yes I do. Lee: You don't see it. And I don't know what to say. You don't understand. I-I-I've gotta go. Sorry. [he walks on] Randi: I'm sorry.

Some things change you forever. And your life becomes increasingly more defined by before and after.

Being raped for example.

But: is this particular rape one of them?

Of course the part after will often revolve around the extent to which justice prevails. The rapist must be caught. The rapist must be punished. Still what if you are able to inflict your own rendition of that? What if you go after the rapist yourself in order to exact a particularly satisfying payback?

At least that's where you think this one is heading.

You've always been ruthless. But now you have the opportunity to take this to a whole other level. On the other hand, you are a convoluted personality living in a convoluted world where, among other things, irony abounds. For example, you own a company that manufactures video games that revolve around extremely graphic sex and violence.

The plot here is ever complex and...twisted. And in that respect it imitates the lives of those willing to sink down into the ever more perverse cracks and the crevices of the "human condition". There is still right and wrong of course. But in a world that some really do construe as beyond good and evil, even a sexual assault becomes tangled up in the sort of decadent mores that will make some, well, flinch.

The whole thing is particularly surreal because she had been flagrantly flirting with the man for some time. Her reaction is...complex?

Postmodern love. Postmodern sex. Postmodern rape.

In France as it were.

IMDb

The initial plan was to produce the movie in the United States, but there were problems finding a female lead. Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone, Julianne Moore and Diane Lane were offered the role, but they all passed on the opportunity. Marion Cotillard and Carice van Houten were also considered. According to Paul Verhoeven, most actresses immediately rejected the part as soon as they had read the script, instead of waiting for a few days, which is normal. One of the actresses said she felt uncomfortable because of things that had happened to her in the past, one didn't give any reasons but just said, 'certainly not'. Verhoeven relocated the shoot of Elle to France after being turned down by Hollywood actresses. Verhoeven revealed that Isabelle Huppert read the book, called up the writer and the producer and said she wanted to do the movie. When they were discussing it, she brought up Verhoeven's name. Huppert chose Verhoeven, not the other way around. Verhoeven told The Guardian that the only American actor who would have been game, he thinks, is Jennifer Jason Leigh, "she would have had absolutely no problem, She's extremely audacious. But she's an artistic presence and we were looking for names", he said.

Before the production began, Paul Verhoeven went to a Dutch language institute to learn French, in order to better communicate with the cast and crew. He said it was simply necessary, because according to tradition, making a French movie should be done with an all-French crew. He initially spoke English with them, but this didn't work efficiently. Fortunately, Verhoeven had once been to a French school in his youth, so he picked up the language quickly.

Vincent [pointing to the bruise on her face]: What's that? Michèle: I fell off my bike.

...

Kurt: The real problem is right there. The real problem is, your background in publishing and literature is completely inappropriate for evaluating playability. Michele: Okay, maybe Anna and I should've founded a different sort of company. Maybe Kronos was only a hit thanks to your genius ideas. Maybe we're just two bitches who got lucky. But the fact is, the boss here is me. And we're 6 months behind. Our goal is simple, as you all know. When the player guts an orc, he needs to feel the blood on his hands. Thick, warm blood. If at all possible.

...

Michele reads a text on her phone: "You are very tight for a woman your age"

...

Michele [at a restaurant]: Richard, would you say I am tight for a woman my age?

...

Michele: I was looking for a way of simply and naturally tossing this out. but I can't find one. So... Here goes. I was assaulted...at home. I guess I was raped. Anna: Raped? Oh, my god. For real? When? Michele: Thursday, at 3pm. Anna: And you never said? Michele: I don't know what to say. What can I say? I feel stupid for bringing it up. Richard: Are you insane?Anna: Are you alright? You have to see a doctor. Michele: Done that. Richard: What did the cops say? [Michele says nothing]Richard: You didn't report it? Anna: Michele, you have to report it immediately. Michele: What for? Anna: What for! Michele: It's over. It doesn't need talking about anymore. It's not worth a debate. How about we order?

...

Michele reads a text on her phone: "I like the blouse you're wearing. The cream color. My sperm won't leave a stain"

...

Irene: You father is up before the judge next week. Michele: They'll never let him out. Thank god! The parole hearing is a charade. Like you telling me to come, when you know I'd rather gouge my eyes out. Irene: How long will you hang on to hatred? Michele: I'll never see him again, in this world or any other. Anyway, there is no other.

Her father, the monster:

Reporter [on TV]: Seen today, this quiet street in the suburbs of Nantes bears no trace of the atrocities that took place here 39 years ago. Few of today's inhabitants know the name, Georges Leblanc. Or if they do, it's a name associated with a horror story that they can hardly remember. An urban folktale from another time. And yet, in 1976, the eyes of France were trained on this street. A nation held its breath. In shock. Time has dulled the terror of that distant day in May. But for some the horror will never fade away. Nor will the unanswered questions. What drove Georges Leblanc, a practising Catholic, loving husband and father, to commit such monstrous and senseless acts? And what role exactly was played by his daughter, Michle? A ten-year-old child at the time. After years of trials and psychiatric evaluations, over 30 years after Georges Leblanc's incarceration, sentenced to life, the questions remain, as banal yet chilling as ever. First and foremost...Why?

...

Michèle [to Richard]: The bimbos with big tits never worried me, but a woman who's read: "The Second Sex" will chew you up...And spit you out.

...

Michele: Kevin? You shoot, right? I mean, real shooting. Kevin: That's right, I do. Michele: You own guns? Kevin: A couple. Michele: Could you teach me?

...

Michele: Kevin, I also wanted to talk to you because I've got an unofficial assignment for you. Kevin: A black op? Michele: I want to know who created that animation. You know the one I mean? Hack into the home computers of the whole office. All the guys, at least. Kevin: I want to help, but that's a major violation. Michele: I'm offering $10,000 cash in hand. Between you and me. Our secret. Kevin: When you snoop on people, you turn up some weird shit. Michele: I know. I won't judge.

...

Michele: My father made the sign of the cross on me, before I left for school. He did it to all the local kids until some parents asked him to stop. Sounds reasonable. Apparently, my father was offended. That night. he made the rounds. Knocked on every door, went into every house on the street with a shotgun, a butcher's mallet and a pair of kitchen knives. Patrick: Yes, I heard about that. Michele: You heard about the 27 human victims, not about the animals. They never get a mention. 6 dogs, a couple of cats, too. For whatever reason, he spared a hamster. You couldn't make it up.

...

Michele [to Patrick]: My father decided to burn everything in the house. I helped feed the fire. We gutted the place. Curtains, carpets...Tables, chairs...All in the fire. It was exciting. You get caught up in it. We were about to burn our clothes when the police arrived. Someone snapped a photo. Bizarrely, it's that photo that stuck in people's minds. Me, half-naked, smeared with ash. The photo of a little girl as psychopath, next to her father, the psychopath. My empty stare in the photo is terrifying.

...

Robert: Say you don't want me anymore and we're done. Michele: It's not that simple. But if you like...I don't want this anymore, this situation, the lies. Robert: You dodged my question. Michele: Sorry. I don't want to fuck you anymore. Was that the question?

...

Michele: Take out your dick. Kevin: Pardon me? Michele: Show me your dick and I might not fire you. [Kevin lowers his pants]Michelle: I thought you were Jewish Kevin: Well, no.Michele: Put it back in The man I'm looking for is circumcised.

...

Warden: Can we talk in my office if you don't mind? This way... Michele: I'm here to spit in my father's face. I can't guarantee it's a metaphor. People have all kinds of reasons. I came because I gave the bastard too much power over me. My whole life fleeing him, fearing him. What a waste!Warden: Ms. Leblanc...Your father is dead.

...

Michèle [leaning over and whispering to her father...now a corpse]: I killed you by coming here.

Cue the deer.

Michele: So, how was it?[Patrick says nothing]Michele: Was it good? How was it?[Patrick says nothing]Micvhele: Answer me. Did you enjoy it? Why did you do it? Patrick: It was necessary.

...

Ralf: I saw that your father passed away. One less bastard in the world. Michele: You should start packing your bags. Ralf: I saw all the shows on TV about you and your dad. When you murdered all those people. I saw all the corpses, all the dead children. The bastard's dead now, and at least I fucked his wife.

...

Robert [after having sex with Michele]: You were fabulous. Where'd you get the idea of playing dead?

...

Michele: Do it. Patrick: It doesn't work like that. Not for me. It has to be like before.

Michele: It's me. Anna: What's you? Michele: It's me, sleeping with Robert. It's over now, but it was me. Anna: How long? Michele: 6-8 months. Anna: I didn't have a clue. Michele: I know. Anna walks away distraught, Robert walks over to Michele]Robert: What did you do? M ichele: I stopped lying.

...

Michèle: It's twisted. Patrick: What? Michele: Twisted. Between us, it's sick. Diseased. It's perverse. I was in some kind of weird denial but now it's all very clear. Patrick: What's clear? Michèle: You expect to get away with what you've done to me? I'm gonna do what I should have done right from the beginning. Patrick: What do you mean? Michèle: It's not just about me. There's your wife too. Others, maybe. Who knows. Patrick: What do you mean? Michèle: How many others? How many women did you rape? [Patrick is silent] Michèle: I'm going to the police. I'll tell everything.

...

Michele: How's Robert? Anna: I kicked him out. Ever since, he's hit the bottle. What did you see in him? Michele: It was just one of those things. An opportunity. I wanted to get laid. Anna: That's no excuse. It was shabby. Michele: Worse than that even.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

You can take the juvenile delinquent out of the city, but can you take the city out of the juvenile delinquent?

Let's go to New Zealand and find out. Out in the bush as it were.

This is one of those films [and there are lots and lots of them] that is bursting with humor and yet we know that underneath all the chuckles is some serious shit.

In other words [as they say], "it has a heart".

But that can get tricky. After all, if the dots you connect between the grins and the groans aren't just right, it doesn't ring true. On the other hand, where you would connect the dots between them isn't necessarily where others would connect them . So [as with most things in life] your reaction to this particular take on the human condition will say as much about you as it does about them.

Here they take a "young, overweight, orphaned juvenile offender that idealizes hip hop" and figure out a way to dump him "on a rotting farm somewhere in the rural back blocks with foster parents".

Cue Uncle Hec.

All Hector basically wants from life is to be left alone. And all Ricky basically wants from life is, well, that remains to be seen.

In part it all unfolds rather tongue and cheek. Like reading a comic book. And yet other parts seem to be almost believeable. You keep going back and forth trying to make up your mind. Is it just an "adventure flick" for kids, or is there really something there for all the rest of us.

IMDb

In the birthday scene, the cast and crew filmed ten takes singing the normal "Happy Birthday" song before finding out they didn't have the rights to use it. So the song "Ricky Baker, It's your Birthday" was created on the spot by the actors.

All of the news presenters in the film were all actual news presenters on New Zealand TV at the time of filming.

An open casting call was held for a 12 to 15 year-old Maori girl to play the role of Kahu, with Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne selected out of 150 applicants. Ngatai-Melbourne auditioned after her friends thought the character description of Kahu sounded like her.

The Uncle portrayed as someone illiterate. But in real life Sam Neill has a BA in English Literature.

Paula [child welfare lady]: Now, uh, obviously we've got a couple of things to talk through, Bella. Clearly you've been briefed about his, uh, background and also his foster care history. Apparently he's a bit of a handful, a real bad egg. I mean, if you look at his file, you'll see that for yourself. We're talking disobedience, stealing, spitting, running away, throwing rocks, kicking stuff, defacing stuff, burning stuff, loitering and graffiti. And that's just the stuff we know about.

...

Paula: Ricky! There's no one else who wants you, OK? And you know what the alternative is, don't you? Eh? Think you can make it work? Bella: 'Course we can. We'll make it work.

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Paula [watching Hec approach them with a dead boar on his back]: Who's that Crocodile Dundee guy over there? Bella: Oh, that's my husband, Hector.Paula: Well, I see he has a rifle. Just keep it away from this little guy. God knows what he's capable of.

...

Bella: Ricky, this is Hec. You can call him Uncle, if you like. Hec [gruffily]: No, he can't.

...

Bella: Jeez, boy, it's a miracle we found you! You made it all of 200 meters. Ricky: I was just taking a break. Bella: Hec's cooking breakfast. Eggs, bacon, a few sossies on the side...pancakes. Come on. Have some breakfast, then you can run away.

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Ricky: Bella told me to tell you that you should give me something to do. Is there anything you want me to do? Hec: Yeah... leave me alone.Ricky: Cool.

...

Bella: What are you gonna call your dog? Ricky: Um, still thinking. Something fierce to reflect its true nature. Either Psycho, Megatron...or Tupac. Bella: What's a Tupac? Ricky: It's just my...this really cool rapper, and he's, like, my best friend. Bella: Are you gonna run away tonight? Ricky: Not sure.

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Minister [after Bella dies]: You know, sometimes in life it seems like there's no way out. Like a sheep trapped in a maze designed by wolves. And you know that if you're ever in that situation, there are always two doors to choose from. And through the first door- oh, it's easy to get through that door- and on the other side waiting for you are all the nummiest treats you can imagine...Fanta, Doritos, L&P, Burger Rings, Coke Zero. But you know what? There's also another door, not the Burger Ring door, not the Fanta door; another door that's harder to get through. Guess what's on the other side? Anyone want to take a guess? Ricky: Vegetables? Minister: N-No, not vegeta...No. Woman: Jesus? Minister: You would think Jesus. I thought Jesus the first time I-I-I-I came across that door. It's not Jesus. It's another door. And guess what's on the other side of that door? Woman: Jesus. Minister: Jesus. Yeah, Jesus. He's tricky like that, Jesus.

...

Ricky [after reading a letter from the Child Welfare Ministry]: But I live here now. It's my home! Hec: Not any more, it isn't. Not in their eyes. Not without a woman to run the show. Ricky: Why don't we just get you a new wife? There's plenty of ladies on the internet, I heard.

...

Ricky: Hey, you can't put Auntie in a box. Hec: Give it a rest, boy.Ricky: But she wanted to go to the sky place. Hec: She's gone, OK? That's life...one day you're here, and the next you're in a bloody box. Just get this into your head, boy---it was Bella that wanted you here, not me. I know you think this can work, but it can't. So the welfare people are coming on Friday. They're coming to get you. Ricky: That's that, then? Hec: Yep... that's that.

...

Ricky: I ran out of toilet paper, give me some of yours. Hec: Eh? Ricky: I've gotta poop. I need to poop, you need to poop, we all poop. Hec: Use a leaf.

...

Paula: This ain't no charred foster kid. Andy: How can you tell, Paula? Paula [flinging a paper plate at him]: Does this look like a human head to you, Andy?Andy: Hey, I reckon the old man chopped him up, buried him somewhere. Or ate him.

Hec: You can take him, but I'm staying here. Hugh: Like hell. People want answers. Ron: Yeah, answers. Hec: Look, we got lost, I got injured, he's fine, it was basically a holiday. Ricky: Not a real holiday because he made me do stuff. Hugh: Like what? Ricky: Just stuff. He had a sore leg so he made me do things for him. It was hard at first because my hands are so soft, but I got used to it. I didn't really wanna do it, but it was the only way to survive. It wasn't always hard, sometimes I got to do my own thing. He pretty much never joined in with me though. I asked if he wanted to play with me, but he would just make me play with myself. Ron: I feel sick, Hugh. Hec: Well....Hang on. He doesn't know what he means. Ron: You're a bloody pervert!!

Ricky: We'll just tell them you were looking after me. Hec: Doesn't matter what you tell them, they won't believe you. They'll think I made you do it. I'm not going back to jail, I'm better off up here. This is no place for a kid. You're gonna have to go back, Ricky. Ricky: To what? Hec: To the welfare people. Ricky: No!

Ricky: Auntie Bella said she was from up here...from this special lake that almost touches the sky. Hec: Bella didn't know where she was from. Ricky: Nah, she said... Hec: No. She was making it up. Look, Bella didn't have any family. Like you. Like me. That's why she wanted to look after you...and took pity on me. She wanted to save us poor wretches when no one else wanted us.

...

Newsman [to the camera]: Ricky Baker and Hector Faulkner, two renegade outlaws on the run for four months now, and fast becoming legends here in New Zealand....Faulkner and Baker's popularity is on the rise after a valiant effort to save a critically ill park ranger. The forces are circling against them, and I am reminded of "First Blood". John Rambo, a man alone...obviously they're two men alone here...out there somewhere beyond the cutty grass in this dense, thick bush....They are fighting for freedom. And we believe in freedom in New Zealand. It is a marvellous thing.

...

Ricky: I'll never stop running! Paula: Yeah, and I'll never stop chasing you. I'm relentless. I'm like the Terminator. Ricky: I'm more like the Terminator than you! Paula: I said it first, you're more like Sarah Connor, and in the first movie too, before she could do chinups.

...

Hugh: There's a reward for your capture. Hec: How much? 10 grand. Ricky: Tell us when it gets to 20.

...

Hec: You can't keep on the run forever. You've got to go back to society, you know that. Ricky: I'm a menace to society.

...

Hec: You're not a bloody gangster. Ricky: How would you know? Hec: Because I've known real gangsters, and they're a lot tougher than you are. Ricky: Yeah, but were they skux, though? Hec: Skux? What the hell does that mean? Ricky: You know...skux. Hec: Yeah, but what does it mean? Ricky: Everything. It's cool, spunky, brainy, good-looking, you know, gangster. Hec: Oh, for God's sake. You're not a bloody gangster!!!

...

Hec: So, she's been with us the whole time, eh? Ricky: Yeah.Hec: Well, pretty close to the sky up here. Thanks for bringing her, mate.

...

Ricky [whispering]: Why do you reckon he calls himself Psycho Sam? Psycho Sam [putting pots on their head]: Here you go. Put these on. Stop the Government from tracking you. Ricky: Never mind.

...

Psycho Sam: That's the typical government. Always trying to step on the little guy just for living his life. It never stops either. That's why I can't go back. Not going to be part of the machine. Form fillers. Hec: Form fillers? Psycho Sam: That's how they get you. Anything you want to do in life, you got to fill out a form. And they've got forms for everything. You fill it out, it goes upstairs, and then they make you fill out a new form, just to confirm it was you that filled out the first form. And if ever you want to stop filling out forms, well, there's about five different forms for that.

...

Hec: How did you get this thing started? Ricky: The knack.

...

Hec [with the cops, the hunters, the army and Paula closing in]: May as well play it to the end. What do you reckon? Ricky: You mean have a shoot out, and then when we've got no bullets, run out and say, "Freedom!" And then die in a blaze of glory? Hec: No. I meant till we run out of petrol.

...

Hec: OK. Stop the truck, Ricky. I just- stop the truck. I want to get out now. Ricky [aiming for a metal fence]: I didn't choose the skux life; the skux life chose me. Hec: Ricky, stop!! Stop!!!Ricky [pedal to the metal]: FREEDOM!!!!

...

Ricky [to Hec]: How was jail? Did you shank anyone?

...

Ricky: Here we go. Reckon you can handle it? Hec: What do you think? Reckon you can find that bird? Ricky: Yeah, I think I know where it is. Hec: Seem to remember it was a pretty beautiful place. Ricky: Yeah, majestical.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles

You know what they say: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

On the other hand, most of us are saddled with the sort of responsibilities and obligations -- bills to pay, children to raise, families to foster -- that we never even come close to that sort of freedom. If that's even the proper way in which to think about freedom at all.

So, we watch films like this and imagine that, had things been different, that could have been me. Well, if that's the way your head is actually wired.

In other words, young, dumb and full of cum.

But free.

Imagine then a clique of renegade misfits out on the open road going door to door selling magazine subscriptions. No, really. That's what they do. But these "kids" are about as far removed from the American Dream as you can get. Yet somehow through their interactions with the rest of us we get to explore the extent to which that dream has long since transfigured into something entirely different. Like just barely hanging on from week to week or day to day; in a dreary and drab existence.

And, personalities and partying aside, it is all about the money. It's all about the hustle. Somebody set it all up so that [in the end] they get most of the money; and the kids are just so many pawns in their game. But, if that's all it is, the least you can do is to make the most of it.

And then we [the spectators] get to decide if it is all their own fault or if maybe [just maybe] "society" is also to blame.

Of course you then begin to wonder: Just how many kids are there like this out there?

Watch the film and try to imagine the reaction of folks like, say, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

IMDb

Director Andrea Arnold wanted to work with unknown actors. She would often approach teenagers on the street whom she thought would be good for the movie, and hold impromptu auditions in parking lots.

Filmed in chronological order. Much of the dialogue was improvised.

Director Andrea Arnold split the scripts into parts and gave each actor their daily script on the day of filming. Keeping their scripts a mystery was done to prevent them from planning too much and overacting.

When Sasha Lane was approached on the beach in Panama City, her friend with her thought they were being scouted for porn, and walked away. Then realizing that was not the intent; she ended up cast as the lead.

Partly inspired by a 2007 New York Times article about the on-the-road existence of the "mag crew" kids.

Star [dumpster diving for food with two of her Mom's young children]: Are you Spider-Man? Rubin: Yeah. I'm Spider-Man of the dumpster.

...

Jake: We go door-to-door. We sell magazines door-to-door, being friendly. You know, you seem friendly. You make $300 a day if you're good. If you're smart. You seem pretty smart, so figured I'd ask. Hmm? Come with us. Star: You can't just give me a job like that. Jake: Yes, I fucking can. I'm a business manager....Come with us. We do more than work, you know. We explore, like, America. We party. A whole bunch of shit. It's cool.

...

Star: I got a job. It's in Kansas. Mom: Did you come all the way here to tell me that? What kind of fucking job you got in Kansas? Star: Nathan can't have them, you know that. Mom: I can't have them. Kelsey: Is that the surprise? Star: I can't take you to Kansas. I'm sorry. Boyfriend: Hey, what's going on? Mom: She wants us to have the kids because she's got a fucking job in Kansas. Star: They are yours.

Corey: Hey, what's up? Are you new? Star: Yeah. Corey [pulling his dick out]: Yeah? You should let me be the first one to fuck you.

...

Star: What do we sell again?Girl: Magazines. Star: People actually buy those anymore?Girl: Fuck, no.

...

Pagan: So, I have this obsession with Darth Vader. To me, he's just like the epitome of just darkness and suffering. Um, and misunderstanding. Um, I feel like he was just a broken heart that lost any hope for love and life.

...

Star: Is this of you selling? Girl: Yeah, we're at a Walmart selling some shit.Star: So this is what I have to do? Girl: Yeah, sell magazines. You just gotta come up with your own spiels and shit, like I use the whole, "Oh, my dad was killed in Afghanistan" shit.Star: Shit, was he? Girl: No, but, shit, people love that patriotic shit.

...

Jake: Prove to me your name is Star, and I'll give you a present. Star: It was my mom's idea. She said we're all made from stars. From Death Stars.

...

Krystal: What's rule one? Star: Don't be late for anything. Krystal: Bitch, you don't make money, I don't make money. You get it? I'm gonna let it slide this time because it's your first day. You keep 20 percent of what you make, 25 if it's cash. Always try and get cash. Star: Okay. Krystal: The rest is management fees, goes to motels, gas. That's basically it. Jake'll train you.

...

Kyrstal [to the crew]: Where y'all headed today is real wealthy territory. I ain't tried this kind of territory before, but these people are loaded and it shouldn't be hard. So what are there? All: No excuses! Krystal: And with Loser Night coming up in a few days, some of y'all need to step the fuck up.

...

Star [to the crew in the van]: What's Loser Night?Boy: That's a fun motherfucking night right there. Yeah, kinda, sort of. It's a party practically. It's where the two losers of the week...Whoever makes the least amount...Least amount of money...has to fight each other. It's a game, but technically it's not a game.

...

Pagan: You know what Darth Vader looks like beneath that mask?Star: No, what? Pagan: He's a skeleton. Just like the rest of us.

...

Jake: You read the handbook last night - about the five sales steps?Star: Yeah. Jake: That's a bunch of shit, all that. You don't gotta listen to that. See, 'cause in Jake's book there's one fucking step. Not five, just one. It just takes one step. Once you get this one fucking step down, you're the chief of the tribe. And I'm gonna teach you that one step today. You hear what I'm saying? Basically, as soon as they open that door and look at you, that's the critical moment, that's the make-or-break moment. 'Cause in that second you gotta work them, you gotta read them, you gotta be able to scan them and figure them out, figure what kind of person that person wants in their life. Then you gotta be that person. You know? So, like, a couple of the other agents are really rigid about the five sales steps and all this shit. So they'll pick a spiel that's, like, some sad shit, like... "Mama's got cancer" or, "My fucking foot is falling off." "I'm trying to get my life back together." You know, "I got a little lost there in my teens, and now I'm really working and now I'm really working on myself, man," and, "Oh, you know, my dad, he died in Iraq." Any sad spiel, and they'll just say it over and over and over again until it's meaningless. [Jake points to a house]Jake: This person? This person doesn't give a fuck about magazines, right? They want something from me, so if I'm a G, I'm gonna figure out what that something is and I'm gonna work that.

...

Star [after Jake gives her a ring]: Did you steal it? Jake: They have everything, you know, including insurance, so it's fine. Star: What if it's her wedding ring? Jake: Who gives a shit? What, are you fucking religious or something? Star: No. God can go fuck himself. God's a cunt.

...

Krystal: So, tell me, what was it that you don't agree with that Jake does? Star: The lying. Krystal: He ain't lying. He's selling. That's his job. I don't get what you want. You wanna make money or you don't?Star: I wanna make money.Jake: She just needs more time. I'm good with the wild ones, you know? Star: I'm not a fucking cow. Ktrsyal: It costs me when you don't earn. Do you get that? This shit, the motel, the gas, everything, that costs me. And I can't run my business like that. So you show me you can do it, or I'll leave you on the side of the road. Clear? Star: Crystal. Krystal: Is that a joke? Star: No.

...

Krystal: I'm watching you, country girl, and you're starting to get on my nerves. So your training's done now. You fuck up this week, I'm gonna leave you in the plains with the mountain lions. You think that's a joke? Jake, tell her.Jake: It happens. In Nevada, left a girl in the desert with nothing. It just happened before you came. East Texas, gas station. No food, no water, no money, no shoes, no shit. Krystal: So don't fuck me off.

...

Star: Hey, can I ask you something? Trucker: You kids selling something? Star: Yeah, magazines. Trucker: I don't do magazines. Sorry. Star: Well, you don't have to read 'em. You can use 'em to wipe your ass.

...

Star [after they have sex]: Do you have any dreams? Jake: Dreams? Like future dreams? Star: Yeah. Jake: Nobody's ever asked me that.

...

Krystal: Okay, so this town has got people from all over the country and it's filled with fucking oil. So what does that mean? All: Money!!Krystal: It means these people are making a shit load of money. And how does that make people feel when - they make that kind of cash?All: Amazing!Krystal: No, it makes them feel like shit. It makes them feel guilty. So I want y'all to dress like dirty white trash, and then they'll pity you.

...

Star: This is a nice truck. [Oil field worker chuckles]: Star: What's funny? Oil Field worker: You're sitting there talking about my truck while you're stroking my cock.Star: Well, it's a nice truck....Am I doing this right? Oil field worker" Can I ask you to do me a favor? Since I am paying for this.Star: Okay. Oil field worker: Could you be quiet? Star: Okay, I'll shut up.

...

Krystal: You think you're special. You know, I pay Jake girl-money. A hundred dollars every time he finds a girl. Where you think Drema came from? And he fucks all of them, too. Y'all don't mean nothing to him. I've been trying to think if I should keep you or not. Did you make any money in Williston? Star: Yeah, I did, but I ain't got the slips for you. Krystal: That's cool. Just give me the money and give me the slips later. Did you think that was Jake? That's Bill. Bill, that's Star. Bill: Hey, Star. Krystal [pointing across the room]: And that's Frank. Jake's gone. I told him he can't come back again.

He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest. John Fowles